HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Volume
II, Chapter 8, page 139—184. State.
CONTENTS
139
EIGHTH
CHAPTER
STATE
Methinks
I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a
strong
man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her
as
an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at
the
full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the
fountain
itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and
flocking
birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at
what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year
of sects and schisms. — MILTON.
EMPEROR
AND POPE
Were
it my task to describe historically the struggle in the State till the
thirteenth century, I could not fail to dwell specially upon two
things:
the struggle between the Pope and the Emperor, and the gradual
transformation
of the majority of free Teutons into bondsmen, while others among them
raised themselves to that powerful class of hereditary nobility, so
dangerous
to those above as well as to those beneath them. But here I have to
confine
my attention to the nineteenth century, and neither that fatal struggle
nor the curiously varied changes which society, tossed violently this
way
and that, underwent, possess more than historical interest to-day. The
word “Emperor“ has become so meaningless to us, that quite a number of
European princes have added it as an ornament to their titulature, and
the “white slaves of Europe“ (as an English writer of our days,
Sherard,
calls them) are not
140 STATE
the result of
a past feudal system, but the victims of a new economic development. *
If we go deeper, we shall find that that struggle in the State,
confused
as it appears, was fundamentally a struggle for the State, a struggle,
in fact, between universalism and nationalism. If we realise this, we
gain
a clearer understanding of the events in question, and a bright light
is
shed upon our own time, giving us a more distinct view of many events
to-day
than we otherwise could attain.
This reflection enables us at once to map out the plan of this chapter.
But before proceeding I must make one remark.
The Roman Empire might well be called a “world-empire“;
orbis romanus,
the Roman world, was the usual designation. Noteworthy is it that men
should
be wont to say “the Roman world,“ not “the world“ merely. Though the
paid
Court poet, in search of resounding hexameters, wrote the often quoted
words:
- Tu
regere
imperio
populos, Romane, memento!
yet the
presumption
thoughtlessly accepted even by some earnest historians, that this was
the
entire Roman programme, is quite unsound. As I have shown in the second
chapter, the fundamental idea of ancient Rome was not expansion but
concentration.
The empty phrases of a Vergil should deceive no one on this point. Rome
was compelled by historical events to expand around a firm central
point,
but even in the days of its most extensive power, from Trajan to
Diocletian,
nothing will strike the careful observer more than its strict
self-control
and self-restraint. That is the secret of Roman strength; by that Rome
proves itself to be the truly political nation. But as far as it
extends,
Rome destroys individuality, it creates an orbis romanus; its
influence
* See in chap. ix. the division
“Economy.“
141
STATE
outwardly is a
levelling one. And when there was no longer a Roman nation, no longer
even
a Caesar in Rome, there still remained that specifically Roman
principle
of levelling — the destruction of all individuality. On this the Church
now planted the genuine universal idea, which the purely political Rome
had never known. It had been the Emperors, in the first place
Theodosius,
who had created the idea of the Roman Church, but certainly all that
they
had thought of was the orbis romanus and its better discipline;
now, however, a religious principle superseded the political, and while
the latter is limited by nature, the former is unlimited. To convert to
Christianity became henceforth a moral obligation, since the eternal
salvation
of man depended on it; such a conviction could know no limits. * On the
other hand, it was a State duty to belong to the Roman Church, to the
exclusion
of every other form of Christianity; the Emperors ordered this on pain
of severe punishment. In this way the former, systematically limited
Roman
idea was extended to that of a Universal empire; and since politics
indeed
supplied the organism, but the Church the categorical idea of
universality,
it is natural that out of the Imperium there should gradually arise a
theocracy
and that the high priest should soon set upon his head the diadema
imperii.
†
The fact to which I should like first of all to call attention
* See, for example, the wonderful letter of Alcuin to
Charlemagne
(in Waitz:
Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, ii, 182), in which the
Abbot admonishes the Emperor to extend the Empire over the whole world,
not in order to satisfy political ambition, but because by so doing he
would extend the boundaries of Catholicism.
† It is still a disputed question which Pope first wound the double
diadem
round the tiara; it was at all events done in the eleventh or twelfth
century.
The one ring bore the inscription: Corona regni de manu Dei,
the
other: Diadema imperii de manu Petri. To-day the Papal crown
has
a triple diadem; according to Wolfgang Menzel (Christliche Symbolik,
1854, i, 531), who inclined to Catholicism, these three diadems
symbolise
the rule of the Roman Church over earth, hell, and heaven. No
imperialism
can go further than that.
142 STATE
is this, that
it is not right to see in every Emperor — though he be a Henry IV. — a
representative and champion of the secular power in opposition to the
ecclesiastical.
The idea of universal power is the essence of Christian-Roman
imperialism.
Now this idea does not come, as we saw, from ancient Rome; it was
religion
that had introduced the new revealed truth, the kingdom of God upon
earth,
a purely ideal power, founded, that is to say, on ideas, and ruling men
by ideas. Of course the Emperors had, so to speak, secularised this
principle
in the interests of their power, but by adopting it, they had at the
same
time bound themselves to it. An Emperor, unwilling to belong to the
Roman
Church or to be an advocate and defender of the universalism of
religion,
would not have been an Emperor. A quarrel between Emperor and Pope is
therefore
always a quarrel within the Church; the one wishes more influence to be
given to the regnum, the other to the sacerdotium; but
the
dream of universalism remains common to them both, as does that loyalty
to the Imperial-Roman Church, which should supply the cement of souls
in
the world-empire. Now the Emperor nominates the Pope on his own
authority
(as in 999 Otto III. nominated Sylvester II.), and is hence an
undisputed
autocrat; on another occasion the Pope crowns the Emperor “from the
fullness
of Papal power“ (as Innocent II. in 1131 crowned Lothar); originally
the
Emperors (or the territorial Princes) nominated all bishops, at a later
time the Popes claimed this right; the Council of Bishops, too, could
arrogate
the chief power, declare itself “infallible,“ depose and imprison the
Pope
(as in Constance in 1415), while the Emperor sat a powerless spectator
among the prelates, not even able to rescue a Hus from death. And so
on.
It is in all these things, manifestly, a question of competence within
the Church, that is, within the theocracy considered as universal.
Though
the German archbishops commanded the army which Frederick I.
143 STATE
in 1167 sent
against
Rome and the Pope, it would surely be strange to see in this a real
revolt
of the secular power against the ecclesiastical. It would be just as
strange
to interpret the dismissal of Gregory VII. by the synod of Worms in
1076
as an anti-ecclesiastical move of Henry IV., for almost all the bishops
of Germany and Italy had signed the Imperial decree, and that on the
ground
that “the Pope was arrogating to himself a power hitherto quite
unknown,
while he destroyed the rights of other bishops“ * Naturally I am far
from
wishing to deny the great political importance of all these events, and
particularly their retrospective influence upon the growing national
consciousness,
but I maintain that this is all a question of struggles and intrigues
inside
the then prevailing universal system of the Church; that struggle,
however,
which decided the further course of the history of the world, in
opposition
at once to Pope and Emperor — that is, therefore, in opposition to the
ecclesiastical ideal of State — was carried on by Princes, nobles and
the
middle classes. This means a struggle against universalism and, though
nations were not the first to take it up, since none yet existed, it
yet
led necessarily to their formation, for they are essentially bulwarks
against
the despotism of the Roman imperialistic idea.
THE
“DUPLEX POTESTAS“
I had to premise
this,
in order to settle, once for all, which struggle could and should
occupy
our attention in this book. The struggle between Emperor and Pope
belongs
to the past, that between nationalism and universalism is still going
on.
But before we pass
to our real theme, I should like to add another remark concerning this
rivalry within the universalistic ideal. It is, in truth, not
indispensable
* Hefele: Konziliengeschichte, v. 67.
144
STATE
for our judgment
of the nineteenth century, but in our time the matter has been much
spoken
of, and very greatly to the disadvantage of sound common sense; it has
been again and again revived by the universalistic, i.e., the
Roman
party, and many an otherwise good judgment is led astray by the
skilfully
represented, but quite untenable paradox. I refer to the theory of the
duplex
potestas, the double power. Most educated people know it from
Dante's
De
Monarchia, although it was evolved earlier, contemporaneously, and
later by others. With all respect for the great poet, I hardly think
that
any unbiased man, capable of forming a judgment on politics, will fail
to find this work simply monstrous. A magnificent effect is certainly
produced
by the consistency and the courage with which Dante denies to the Pope
every trace of secular power and worldly possession; but, while he
transfers
to another the fullness of this power, claiming for this other the
theocratic
origin of directly divine appointment, he has only replaced one tyrant
by another. Of the Electors he says that one “may not call them
'selectors,'
“ but rather “proclaimers of the Divine Providence“ (iii. 16); that is,
of course, the unvarnished Papal theory! But then comes the monstrous
idea:
in addition to this absolute autocrat appointed “without intermediary“
by God Himself, there is another equally absolute autocrat, likewise
appointed
by God Himself, the Pope! For “human nature is double and therefore
requires
a double head,“ namely, “the Pope, who in conformity with revelation
guides
humanity to eternal life, and the Emperor, who following the doctrines
of the philosophers shall lead men to earthly happiness.“ As
philosophy,
even, this doctrine is monstrous; for according to it the endeavour
after
purely earthly happiness must go hand in hand with the attainment of an
everlasting happiness in the future life; from a practical point of
view
it is the most un-
145 STATE
tenable delusion
that a poetic brain ever conceived. We may accept it as axiomatic truth
that universalism involves absolutism, that is, freedom from all
limitations;
how then can two absolute autocrats stand side by side? The one cannot
take a single step without “limiting“ the other. Where can we draw a
boundary-line
between the jurisdiction of the “philosophical“ Emperor, the direct
representative
of God upon earth as the Omniscient, and the jurisdiction of the
theological
Emperor, the mediator of eternal life? Does that “double nature“ of
man,
of which Dante speaks, not after all form a unity? Is it capable of
dividing
itself with nicety in two, and — in contradiction to the words of
Christ
— of serving two masters? Even the word mon-archy signifies rule by
one,
and is the monarchy now to possess two absolute rulers? In practice
that
is impossible. The Emperors who were Christians were absolute rulers
inside
the Church also; now and then they summoned the bishops to councils,
but
they issued the ecclesiastical laws on their own authority, and in
dogmatic
questions it was their will that decided. Theodosius might do penance
before
the Bishop of Milan, as he would have done before any other priest, but
he never dreamt of a rival to his absolute authority and would not have
hesitated to crush such a rival. The sentiments of Charlemagne were
just
the same (see p. 101),
though naturally his position could not be so strong as that of
Theodosius;
but Otto the Great attained later exactly the same autocratic power,
and
his Imperial will sufficed to depose the Pope: the logic of the
universalistic
idea demands that all power should lie in one hand. Now indeed, in
consequence
of endless political confusion, and also because the intellects of men
of that time were perplexed with questions of abstract law, many
obscure
ideas came into vogue, among others that clause of ancient Church law,
de
duobus universis monarchiae gladiis, concerning the two swords
146 STATE
of the State;
but, as the above sentence with its genitive singular proves, the
practical
politician had never had so monstrous a conception of the matter as the
poet; for him there is but one monarchy and both swords serve it. This
one monarchy is the Church: a worldly and at the same time a spiritual
Imperium. And because the idea of Imperium is so absolutely theocratic,
we cannot be surprised when the highest power gradually is transferred
from the King to the Pontifex. That both should stand equally
high
is excluded by the nature of men; even Dante says at the end of his
work,
that the Emperor should “show honour to Peter“ and “accept illumination
by his light“; he therefore implicitly admits that the Pope stands
above
the Emperor. At last a strong, clear mind, with political and legal
culture,
cleared up this confusion of historical sophisms and abstractions; it
happened
just at the end of the epoch of which I am here speaking, at the close
of the thirteenth century. * In his bull Ineffabilis, Boniface
VIII.
had already demanded the absolute freedom of the Church; absolute
freedom
means absolute power. But the doctrine of the two swords had made such
fearful havoc of the intellectual strength of the princes, that they no
longer remembered that the second sword was, at best, in the direct
power
of the Emperor; no, every individual prince wished to wield it alone,
and
the divine monarchy thus degenerated into a polyarchy all the more
perilous
as every petty prince had arrogated the Imperial theory and regarded
himself
as an absolute ruler directly appointed by God. One can sympathise with
the princes, for they paved the way for nations, but their theory of
“divine
right“ is simply absurd — absurd, if they remained within the Roman
universal
system, i.e., in the Catholic Church, and doubly absurd, if
they
separated themselves
* Dante lived to see it but, as it appears, did not know how to
estimate
its importance or to draw the necessary conclusions from it.
147 STATE
from the
magnificent
idea of the one divinely desired civitas Dei. To this confusion
Boniface VIII. sought now to put an end by his remarkable bull Unam
sanctam. Every layman should know it, for no matter what has
happened
since or may happen in the future, the logic of the
universal-theocratic
idea * will always imply absolute power in the Church and its clerical
head. First of all Boniface demonstrates that there can be only one
Church
— this would be the point where we should be forced at once to
contradict
him, for from this follows all else with logical necessity. Then comes
the decisive, and, as history proves, true remark: “This one Church has
only one head, not two heads like a monster!“ But if it has only one
head,
then both swords must be in its hand, the spiritual and the secular:
“Both
swords are therefore in the power of the Church, the spiritual and the
secular; the latter must be wielded for the Church, the former by the
Church;
the former by the Priesthood, the latter by Kings and warriors, but
according
to the will of the priest and as long as he suffers it. But one sword
must
be over the other, the secular authority subordinate to the spiritual
...
Divine truth testifies that the spiritual power has to appoint the
secular
power, and to judge it, if it be not good.“ † This made the doctrine of
the Roman Church at last clear, logical and straightforward. We do not
realise the depth of such an idea when we talk of priestly ambition, of
the insatiable maw of the Church, &c.; the fundamental notion here
is the magnificent one of a universal Imperium, which shall not merely
subdue all peoples and thereby create eternal peace, ‡ but shall gird
about
every individual
* Not to be confused with National Theocratism, of which history offers
many an example (above all Judaism).
† See the bull Ineffabilis in Hefele: Konziliengeschichte,
2nd ed. vi. 297 f., and the bull Unam sanctam, p. 347 f.
I
quote from Hefele's German translation, and therefore from an orthodox
Catholic and at the same time authoritative source.
‡ This thought recurs again and again in the old authors.
148 STATE
with its faith,
politics and hope. It is universalism in its highest potentiality,
external
and internal, including even the strenuous endeavour to secure
uniformity
of language. The rock, upon which this empire rests, is the belief in
divine
appointment; nothing less could carry such a structure; it follows that
this Imperium is a theocracy; in a theocratic State the hierarchy
occupies
the first place; its priestly head is therefore the natural head of the
State. Not a single sensible word can be opposed to this logical
deduction,
nothing but threadbare sophisms. For in the most secular of all States,
in Rome, the Imperator had arrogated the title and office of Pontifex
maximus as his highest dignity, as unrivalled guarantee of divine
justification
(Caesar Divi genus — for even this idea is not of Christian
origin).
And should not the Pontifex maximus in a Christian State, that
State
to which religion first had given universality and absolutism, on his
part
feel justified and compelled to view his office as that of an
Imperator?
*
So much with regard to the duplex potestas.
These two discussions, the one on the fundamental identity of the
powers
of Emperor and Pope (both being only portions and manifestations of the
same idea of a sacred Roman universal empire); the other on the
struggle
between the different ruling elements within this naturally very
complicated
hierarchy, are not really meant as a preface to what follows. By them
we
merely cast overboard ballast which would have delayed and made us
deviate
from the true course, for, as I have said, the real “struggle in the
State“
lies deeper, and that it is which offers matter of present interest,
indeed
of passionate interest, and which especially contributes to the
understanding
of the nineteenth century.
* Compare the excellent remark of the Spanish statesman Antonio Perez,
quoted in the preceding chapter, p.
98.
149
STATE
UNIVERSALISM
AGAINST NATIONALISM
Savigny, the great legal authority, writes: “The States into which the
Roman Empire was broken up reflect the condition of the Empire before
this
breaking up.“ The struggle, of which I must here speak, is formally and
ideally very much dependent upon the Imperium which has disappeared.
Just
as the shadows lengthen the farther the sun sinks in setting, so Rome,
the first really great State, threw its shadow far over coming
centuries.
For, carefully considered, the struggle which now bursts into flame in
the State is a struggle of nations for their personal right to live,
against
a universal monarchy dreamt of and aimed at, and Rome bequeathed not
only
the fact of a nationless Police-State with uniformity and order as its
political ideal, but also the memory of a great nation. Moreover, Rome
bequeathed the geographical sketch of a possible — and in many features
lasting — division of chaotic Europe into new nations, as well as
fundamental
principles of legislation and administration, from which the individual
independence of these new structures could derive support and strength
like the young vine from the dry stake. Rome therefore supplied the
weapons
for both ideals, for both systems of politics, for universalism as well
as nationalism. But new elements were added, and they were the living
part,
the sap, which forced the growth of leaves and blossom, they were the
hand
that wielded the weapons; the religious ideal of the universal monarchy
was new, and new too was the race of men that formed the nations. It
was
new that the Roman monarchy was no longer to be secular, but a religion
preparing men for heaven; that its monarch should be henceforth, not a
changing Caesar, but an immortal crucified God; that, in place of
nations
of former history that had disappeared,
150 STATE
there now sprang
up a race of men, the Germanic peoples, just as creative and
individualistic
(and consequently with a natural inclination for forming States) as the
Hellenes and Romans, and moreover in possession of a much more
extensive,
more productive and therefore more plastic, many-sided stock.
The political situation during the first ten centuries from Constantine
onwards is therefore, in spite of the inextricable tangle of events,
quite
clear, clearer perhaps than it is to-day. On the one side the distinct,
well-thought-out conception — derived from experience and existing
conditions
— of an imperially hieratic, unnational universal monarchy,
unconsciously
prepared by the Roman heathens at God's command, * henceforth revealed
in its divinity, and therefore all-embracing, all-powerful, infallible,
eternal — on the other hand, the naturally inevitable formation of
nations
demanded by the instinct of the Germanic people and of those peoples
who
were to a large extent “Germanic“ in the wider sense (see vol.
i.
chap. vi.), and at the same time an unconquerable dislike on their part
to everything stereotyped, a passionate revolt against every limitation
of the personality. The contradiction was flagrant, the conflict
inevitable.
This is no arbitrary generalisation; on the contrary, it is only when
we
consider the apparent caprices of all history as lovingly as the
physiographist
contemplates the stone which he has polished, that the chronicle of the
world's events becomes transparent, and what the eye henceforth sees is
not a matter of accident, but the essential, in fact, the only
non-accidental
thing, the constant cause of necessary, but variable, incalculable
events.
For such causes bring about definite results. Where far-seeing
consciousness
is present, as for example (in the case of universalism) in Charlemagne
and Gregory VII., or on the other hand (in the case of nationalism) in
King
* Augustine: De Civitate Dei v. 21 f.
151
STATE
Alfred or Walther
von der Vogelweide, the necessary form of history assumes clearer
outlines;
but it was by no means necessary that every representative of the Roman
idea or of the principle of nationalities should possess clear
conceptions
of the nature and compass of these ideas. The Roman idea was
sufficiently
imperative; it was an unchangeable fact, according to which every
Emperor
and every Pope was compelled to govern his conduct, no matter what he
might
otherwise think and intend. And the common explanation, that there has
been a development, that ecclesiastical ambition gradually became more
and more grasping, is not well founded, not at least in the modern
superficial
sense, according to which evolution can bring about radical changes;
there
has been an expansion, a complying with temporal conditions, and so
forth;
but Charlemagne followed exactly the same principles as Theodosius, and
Pius IX. stood on exactly the same ground as Boniface VIII. Still less
do I postulate a conscious endeavour to form nationalities. The
late-Roman
idea of a universal theocracy might certainly be thought out in detail
by remarkable men, for it was based on an Imperium, which already
existed
and to which it was directly linked, and on the firmly established
Jewish
theocracy, from which it proceeded without a break; but how should men
have thought of a France, a Germany, a Spain, before they existed? Here
new forms had to be created, forms which even to-day are sending forth
new shoots and will do so as long as life lasts. Shiftings of national
consciousness are taking place before our eyes, and even at the present
day we can see the nation-building principle at work, wherever
so-called
particularism is active: when the Bavarian manifests dislike for the
Prussian,
and the Swabian looks down upon both with mild contempt; when the
Scotchman
speaks of his “countrymen,“ to distinguish them from Englishmen, and
the
inhabitant of New York regards
152 STATE
the Yankee of
New England as being not quite so perfect as himself; when local
custom,
local convention, local legal usages which no legislation can
altogether
destroy, distinguish one district from another — in all this we see
symptoms
of a living individualism, symptoms of the capacity of a people to
become
conscious of its individuality in contrast to that of others, symptoms
of ability for organic formative work. If the course of history created
adequate outward conditions, we Teutons should produce a dozen new,
characteristically
distinct nations. In France this creative capacity has been weakened by
progressive “Romanising“; moreover, it was almost completely trodden
under
foot by the rude Corsican; in Russia it has almost disappeared in
consequence
of the predominance of inferior, un-Teutonic blood, although in former
days our genuine Slavonic cousins were richly endowed with the gifts
which
are necessary for individual creative work — as their language and
their
literature prove. Now it is this gift, which we find still present in
some
cases and no longer so in others, that we see at work in history, not
consciously,
not as a theory, not philosophically proved, not founded upon legal
institutions
and divine revelations, but overcoming all difficulties with the
irresistibility
of a law of nature, destroying where destruction was demanded — for on
what were wrecked the unsound aspirations of the Roman Imperialism of
Teutonic
Kings but on the ever-growing jealousy of the tribes? — at the same
time
it builds up silently and diligently on all sides, so that the nations
were established long before the princes had figured them on the map.
While
the craze of the Imperium Romanum towards the close of the
twelfth
century still fascinated a Frederick Barbarossa, the German singer
could
exclaim
- übel
müeze
mir geschehen,
- künde
ich
ie
mîn herze bringen dar,
- daz im wol
gevallen
153 STATE
- wolte
fremeder
site;
- tiuschiu
zuht
gât
vor in allen! *
And when in the
year
1232 the most powerful of all Popes had through the medium of the King
caused the enemy of Roman influence in England, Chief Justice Hubert de
Burgh, to be taken prisoner, there was not a blacksmith to be found in
the whole land who would forge manacles for him: when threatened with
torture
the journeyman answered defiantly, “Rather will I die any death than
ever
put irons on the man who defended England from the alien!“ The
wandering
bard knew that there was a German people and the blacksmith that there
was an English one, when this fact had little more than begun to dawn
upon
many of the leading lights of politics.
THE
LAW OF LIMITATION
It is obvious that
we are here dealing not with wind-eggs, laid by a hen of the brood of
the
philosophising historians, but with things of the greatest reality. And
since we now know that by thus contrasting universalism and nationalism
we have revealed fundamental facts of history, I should like to regard
this matter generally, more from the inner standpoint. This makes it
necessary
for us to sound the depths of the soul, but in doing so we shall gain
an
insight which will be useful when we seek to form a judgment on the
nineteenth
century; for these two currents are still with us, and that not merely,
on the one hand, in the visible form of the Pontifex maximus
who in the year of grace 1864 once more solemnly asserted his temporal
autocracy, † and, on the other, in
* Woe betide me, if I could ever constrain my heart to be pleased with
foreign ways; German virtue is superior in all respects.
† See the Syllabus § 19 f., 54 f., as also the numerous
articles
against all freedom of conscience, especially § 15: “Whoever
asserts
that a
154 STATE
the
national contrasts of the moment which are becoming more and more
acutely
felt, but also in many views and judgments which we pick up on the path
of life without having any idea of their origin. Fundamentally it is a
question, in fact, of two philosophies or views of existence, each of
which
so entirely shuts out the other that the two could not possibly exist
side
by side, and that it must be a struggle for life or death between them
— were it not that men drift on unconsciously, like ships under full
sail
but without a rudder, aimlessly, heedlessly driven at the bidding of
the
wind. There again a remark of the sublimely great Teuton Goethe will
throw
light on the psychological riddle. In his Aphorisms in Prose he
says of vitally mobile individuality, that it becomes aware of itself
as
“inwardly limitless, outwardly limited.“ That is a phrase
pregnant
with meaning: “outwardly limited, inwardly limitless.“ This expresses a
fundamental law of all intellectual life. For the human individual, in
fact, “outwardly limited“ practically means personality, “inwardly
limitless“
means freedom; the same is true of a people. Now, if we follow up this
thought, we shall find that the two conceptions are mutually dependent.
Without the outward limitation the inner limitlessness is impossible;
if,
on the other hand, outward limitlessness is aimed at, the limit will
have
to be laid down inwardly. And this is the very formula of the neo-Roman
ecclesiastical Imperium: inwardly limited, outwardly limitless.
Sacrifice
to me your human personality and I shall give you a share in Divinity;
sacrifice to me your freedom, and I shall create an Empire which
embraces
the whole earth and in which order and peace shall eternally prevail;
sacrifice
to me your judgment and I shall reveal to you the absolute Truth;
sacrifice
to me Time and I
man
may adopt and confess that religion which seems to him, as far as his
knowledge
goes, to be the true one, shall be excommunicated.“
155 STATE
shall give you
Eternity. For, in fact, the idea of the Roman universal monarchy and of
the Roman universal Church aims at something outwardly limitless: to
the
head of the Imperium omnes humanae creaturae — all human
creatures
— are without exception subject, * and the power of the Church extends
not only to the living, but also to the dead, whom it can punish after
many centuries with excommunication and torments of hell, or promote
from
purgatory to heavenly bliss. I do not deny that there is something
grand
in this conception; we are not speaking of that now; my only object is
to show that all aspiration after what is thus outwardly limitless
necessarily
presupposes and determines the inner limitation of the individual. From
Constantine, who was the first to comprehend the Imperial idea
consistently
in the neo-Roman sense, to Frederick II. of the Hohenstaufen dynasty,
the
last ruler who was inspired by the true universal thought, no Emperor
has
permitted an atom of personal or national freedom, except when weakness
has compelled him to make concessions to the one party, in order to
checkmate
the other. The doctrine quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem
was accepted by Barbarossa from Jurists trained in the Byzantine
school:
he then went and destroyed the cities of Lombardy, which were
flourishing
in defiant freedom and through the industry of the citizens, and
strewed
salt over the smoking ruins of Milan. With less violence but acting on
the same principle, Frederick II. destroyed the liberties which the
German
middle classes were beginning to acquire under the princes of the land.
It is not necessary to show with what undeviating narrowness the Pontifex
lays down the “inner limits.“ The word dogma had signified to
the
ancient Greeks an opinion, a view, a philosophic doctrine; in the Roman
Empire it meant an imperial edict; but now, in the Roman Church,
* See the bull Unam sanctam.
156 STATE
it was called
a divine law of faith, to which all human beings must unconditionally
submit
on pain of everlasting punishment. Let no one cherish illusions on this
point; let no one be led astray by fallacies: this system cannot leave
the individual a particle of free will: it is impossible, and that for
the simple reason — against which no casuistry and no intention,
however
good, can avail — that whoever says “outwardly limitless“ must add
“inwardly
limited,“ whether he wills it or not. Outwardly the sacrifice of
personality
is demanded, inwardly that of freedom. Just as little can this system
recognise
distinct nationalities in their individuality and as the basis of
historical
events; to it they are at the best an unavoidable evil; for as soon as
a strict outward boundary is drawn, the tendency to inward
limitlessness
will proclaim itself; the genuine nation will never submit to the
Imperium.
The civic idea of the Roman hierocracy is the civitas Dei upon
earth,
a single, indivisible Divine State: every systematic division which
creates
outward boundaries threatens the limitless whole, for it produces
personality.
Hence it is that under Roman influence the liberties of the Teutonic
tribes,
their choice of their king, their special rights, and so forth, are
lost;
hence it is that the preaching monks, as soon as nationalities begin
clearly
to assume distinct shape, at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
organise
a thorough campaign against the amor soli natalis — the love of
the native soil; hence it is that we see the Emperors planning the
weakening
of the princes, and the Popes indefatigably endeavouring for centuries
to hinder the formation of States and — as soon as success in this was
hopeless — to retard the development of their freedom, in which the
Crusades
in particular served their purpose well for a long time; hence it is
that
the constitutions of the Jesuit Order make it their first care that its
members become completely “un-
157
STATE
nationalised“
and belong solely to the universal Church; * hence it is that we read
in
the very latest, strictly scientific text-books of Catholic Church law
(see, for example, Phillips, 3rd ed., 1881, p. 804) of the
triumph
of the principle of nationality within the one and universal Church of
God as one of the most regrettable events in the history of Europe.
That
the great majority of Roman Catholics are nevertheless excellent
patriots
shows a lack of consistency that does them honour; in the very same way
Charlemagne, who called himself a Deo
* The Jesuits are rigidly forbidden to talk about individual nations;
the
ideal of Ignatius was, says Goethe (in Ignatius von Loyola, p.
336),
to “fuse all nations“; only where the States made it a condition did he
allow instruction to be given by natives, otherwise it was his fixed
principle
to remove every member from his native land, which secured that no
Jesuit
pupil was educated by a compatriot. The system has not yet been
changed.
Buss, the ultra-montane author of the Geschichte der Gesellschaft
Jesu,
praises it in particular because “it has no character that is dependent
upon the genius of a nation or the peculiarity of a single law.“ The
French
Jesuit Jouvancy in his Lern- und Lehrmethode warns the members
of
the Order especially against “too much reading of works in the mother
tongue“;
for, he continues, “not only is it a waste of much time, but the soul
may
also easily suffer shipwreck.“ Shipwreck of the soul by familiarity
with
the mother tongue! And the Bavarian Jesuit Kropf establishes in the
eighteenth
century as the first principle of the school that “the use of the
mother
tongue be never permitted.“ Read through the whole book (an orthodox
Roman
Jesuit one), from which I take these particulars — Erläuterungsschriften
zur Studienordnung der Gesellschaft Jesu, 1898, Herder (pp. 229 and
417 for the above quotations) — you will not find the word Fatherland
once
mentioned! (While this chapter was being printed, I became acquainted
with
the excellent book of Georg Mertz, Die Pädagogik der Jesuiten,
Heidelberg, 1898, in which the whole educational system is described
from
documents and with scientific impartiality. He who reads carefully this
dry, jejune account will have no doubt that every nation which opens
its
schools to the Jesuits simply commits suicide. I do not in the least
suspect
the good intentions of the Jesuits and do not dispute the fact that
they
attain to a certain pedagogic success; but their whole system aims at
the
systematic destruction of individuality — personal as well as national.
On the other hand, one must admit that this criminal attack upon all
that
is most sacred in humanity, this systematic development of a race which
“out of the light strives to reach the darkness“ is the strictly
logical
application of the Roman postulates; in rigid and rigidifying
consistency
lies the strength of Jesuitism).
158 STATE
coronatus
imperator,
Romanum gubernans imperium, has by his activity in the interests of
culture and his Teutonic attitude of mind contributed more than any
other
to the unfettering of nationalities and to the gagging of the Roman
idea;
but by such inconsistencies the one infallible doctrine of the
theocratic
universal Church is in no way affected, and it is impossible that this
doctrine and this influence should ever make themselves felt in any
direction
but the anti-national. For, I repeat, here it is not a question merely
of this one definite ideal of Church and Imperium, but of a universal
law
of human nature and human actions.
In order that this law may be quite clearly apprehended, we will
briefly
consider the opposite philosophy or view of existence, “outwardly
limited,
inwardly limitless.“ It is only in the form of a being strictly limited
outwardly, resembling no other man, but clearly revealing the law of
its
own special self, that the pre-eminent personality manifests itself; it
is only as a strictly limited individual phenomenon that genius reveals
to us the limitless world of its inner self. I impressed this point so
forcibly in my first chapter (on Hellenic Art) that I do not need to
discuss
it here again in detail; in the second chapter, on Rome, we observed
how
the same law of strictest limitation outwards produced a nation of
unrivalled
inner strength. And I ask, where should we be more entitled, than at
the
sight of the Son of Man upon the Cross, to exclaim, “outwardly limited,
inwardly limitless“? And what words would more clearly re-echo the same
truth across the gulf of time than these: The Kingdom of Heaven is not
outward, in the world of limited forms, but inward, in your hearts, in
the world of the Limitless? This doctrine is the very reverse of the
Church
doctrine. History as a science of observation teaches us that it is
only
those races which are limited, which have taken root in and grown up
out
of national individuality, that
159 STATE
have achieved
great things. So soon as it strove to become universal, the strongest
nation
in the world — Rome — disappeared, and its virtues vanished with it.
Everywhere
it has been the same. The most vivid consciousness of race and the most
constricted civic organisation were the necessary atmosphere for the
immortal
achievements of the Hellenes; the world-power of Alexander has only the
significance of a mechanical spreading of Hellenic elements of culture.
The original Persians were in poetry and religion one of the brightest,
most energetic and most profoundly gifted races of history: when they
had
ascended the throne of a world-monarchy, their personality and with it
their power disappeared. Even the Turks, when they became a great
international
power, lost their modest treasure of character, while their cousins,
the
Huns, by unscrupulously insisting upon the one sole national momentum,
and by forcible fusion of their rich stock of sound German and Slavonic
elements, are on the point of growing into a great nation before our
eyes.
The consideration of these two points brings us to the conclusion that
limitation is a general law of nature, quite as general as the striving
after the Limitless. Man must go out into the Limitless — his nature
imperatively
demands it; to be able to do this, he must limit himself. Here the
conflict
of principles takes place: if we limit ourselves outwardly — in regard
to race, Fatherland, personality — as strictly and resolutely as
possible,
then the inner kingdom of the Limitless will be opened to us, as it was
to the Hellenes and the Brahman Indians; if, on the other hand, we
strive
after something which is unlimited — after an Absolute, an Eternal — we
must build on the basis of a narrowly circumscribed inner life,
otherwise
success is impossible: every great Imperium proves this; it is proved
by
every philosophical and religious system which claims to be absolute
and
alone
160 STATE
valid; it is
proved
above all by that magnificent attempt to supply a universal cosmic idea
and cosmic government, the Roman Catholic Church.
THE
STRUGGLE CONCERNING THE STATE
The struggle then in the State during the first twelve centuries of our
era was fundamentally a struggle between these two principles of
limitation,
which are diametrically hostile in all spheres, and whose opposition to
each other in the province of politics leads to a conflict between
universalism
and nationalism. The question here is, have independent nationalities a
right to exist? About the year 1200 the future victory of the principle
of national limitation, that is to say, of the principle that lays down
outward limits, could no longer be doubted. It is true that the Papacy
was at its zenith — so at least the historians tell us, but they
overlook
the fact that this “zenith“ only signifies victory over the internal
rival
for the monarchy of the world, namely, the Emperor, and that this very
rivalry within the imperial idea, and this very victory of the Pope
have
brought about the final downfall of the Roman system. For in the
meantime
peoples and princes had grown strong: the inner defection from
ecclesiastical
“limitations“ had already begun to be very widespread, the outward
defection
from the would-be princeps mundi was carried out with enviable
inconsistency
by none other than the most pious princes. Thus St. Louis openly took
the
part of the excommunicated Frederick and declared to the Pope: “Les
roys ne tiennent de nullui, fors de Dieu et d'eux-mêmes“; and
he was followed by a Philippe le Bel who simply took prisoner an
obstinate
Pontifex
and compelled his successor to reside in France under his eye and to
confirm
the special Gallican privileges which he desired. This conflict is
different
from that between
161
STATE
Emperor and Pope;
for the princes contest the right of Roman universalism to exist; in
secular
matters they wish to be perfectly independent and in ecclesiastical
matters
to be masters in their own land. Furthermore, even in the days of his
magnificence,
the representative of the Roman hierocracy was compelled painfully to
tack,
and, for a time, in order to keep matters of faith as much as possible
under his control, to sacrifice political claims one after the other;
the
so-called “Roman Emperor of the German nation“ (surely the most idiotic
contradictio
in adjecto that was ever invented) was in a still worse plight; his
title was a mere mockery, and yet he had to pay so dearly for it that
to-day,
at the close of the nineteenth century, his successor is the only
monarch
in Europe who stands at the head, not of a nation, but of a shapeless
human
conglomeration. On the other hand, the most powerful modern State arose
where the anti-Roman tendency had been so unambiguously expressed that
we may say that “the dynastic and the Protestant ideas are so blended
as
to be scarcely distinguishable.“ * In the meantime, in fact, the
watchword
had been issued, and it was: Neither Emperor nor Pope, but nations.
But, in truth, the conflict is not yet ended; for, though the principle
of nationalities has prevailed, the power which represents the opposite
principle has never disarmed, is to-day in certain respects stronger
than
ever, possesses a much better disciplined, more unconditionally
submissive
throng of officials than in any former century, and is only waiting for
the hour when it can unscrupulously assert itself. I have never
understood
why Catholics of culture take pains to deny or to explain away the fact
that the Roman Church is not only a religion but also a system of
government,
and that the Church as representative of God upon earth may eo ipso
claim — and always has claimed — absolute power in all things
* Ranke: Genesis des preussischen Staates, ed. 1874, p. 174.
162 STATE
of this world.
How is it possible to believe what the Roman Church teaches as truth
and
yet speak of an independence of the secular power — as, to take but one
example out of any number, Professor Phillips does in his Manual of
Ecclesiastical Law, § 297, although, in the same paragraph, on
the preceding page, he has just said that “it is not the business of
the
State to determine what rights belong to the Church, nor to make the
exercise
of these dependent upon its consent“? But if the State does not
determine
the rights of the Church it follows of irrefutable logical necessity
that
the Church determines the rights of the State. And what is here said
with
astounding “scientific“ simplicity is repeated in a hundred other books
and in the ever-renewed assertions of high-placed prelates, and the
Church
is represented as an innocent lamb ignorant of civic affairs — which is
impossible without systematic suppression of the truth. If I were a
Roman
Catholic, I should, God knows, show my colours differently, and take to
heart the admonition of Leo XIII., that “we shall not venture to utter
untruth or to conceal truth.“ * And the truth
* In his Papal Brief Saepenumero of August 18, 1883. The
warning
is expressly addressed “to the historians,“ and the Holy Father seems
to
have had before him a whole collection of the neo-Cathohic books of the
kind censured by me, for he says with a sigh that modern history seems
to him to have become a conjuratio hominum adversus veritatem,
and in this way any one who has any knowledge of the literature in
question
will heartily agree with him. Nomina sunt odiosa,
but I remind the reader that in a note to the last chapter (p.
132) I called attention to the fact that even Janssen, whose Geschichte
des deutschen Volkes is so popular and so highly thought of,
belongs
to this “conspiracy against truth.“ Thus, for example, he represents
the
wide dissemination of the Bible at the end of the fifteenth century as
a service of the Roman Church, though he knows very well, first, that
the
reading of the Bible had for two centuries been strictly forbidden by
Rome
and that only the great confusion in the Church of that time led to a
laxity
of discipline; secondly, that at that very moment the middle classes
and
the lower nobility of all Europe were profoundly anti-Roman and for
this
reason devoted themselves with such zeal to the study of the Bible! How
very relative this so-called “dissemination“ was is seen moreover from
the one fact that Luther at twenty
163 STATE
is, that the Roman
Church from the first — that is, therefore, from Theodosius who founded
it — has always claimed unconditional, absolute authority over secular
matters. I say that “the Church“ has claimed it, I do not say “the
Pope“;
for concerning the question who should actually exercise the secular
and
who the highest religious power, there have been at various times
various
views and many a dispute; but the doctrine has always been taught that
this power is innate in the Church as a divine institution, and this
doctrine
forms as I have tried to show in the previous chapter (p. 98
f.), so fundamental an axiom of the Roman religion that the whole
structure
must fall to pieces were the Church seriously to abandon the claim.
This
is in fact the most admirable and — when reflected in a beautiful mind
— the holiest idea of the Roman Church; this religion wishes to provide
not only for the future, but also for the present, and that not only
because
it looks upon earthly life as a preliminary discipline for everlasting
life, but because the Roman Church, as the representative of God,
wishes
in his honour to make this temporal world a glorious
of
age had never seen a Bible and had difficulty in finding one in the
University
library of Erfurt. This one example of falsification of history is
typical;
in the same way Janssen's book “ventures,“ in a hundred places, “to
utter
untruth and to conceal truth,“ and yet it is regarded as strictly
scientific.
What, then, must we say of that most modern literature which shoots up
like fungi from putrid soil, the deliberate aim of which is
systematically
to blacken the character of all national heroes, from Martin Luther to
Bismarck, from Shakespeare to Goethe. Such aims deserve nothing but
contempt.
A well-known proverb says that lies have short legs, and a less
familiar
one that one can see as far down the throat of a liar as of a teller of
truth. May the peoples of Europe soon be able to see down the throats
of
this gang! But do not let our indignation mislead us into putting the
magnificent
universal idea of a Theodosius or a Charlemagne, of a Gregory I. and a
Gregory VII., of an Augustine and a Thomas Aquinas, on a par with such
modern meannesses. The true Roman idea is a genuine idea of culture,
based
finally upon the work and the traditions of the great imperial epoch
from
Tiberius to Marcus Aurelius; the ideal of the writers just mentioned
is,
as we know (see vol. i. p.
569), associated with the uncultured stone age, and the same is
true
of their tricky methods of combat.
164 STATE
forecourt leading
to the divine world. As the Catechism of Trent says: Christi
regnum in terris inchoatur, in coelo perficitur.
(The kingdom of Christ attains perfection in heaven, but it begins on
earth).
* How superficial must thought be if it does not feel the beauty and
the
immeasurable power of such a conception! And in truth this is no dream
of mine, I have not sufficient imagination for that. But I consult
Augustine's
De
Civitate Dei, Book XX. chap. ix. and find: Ecclesia et
nunc
est regnum Christi, regnumque coelorum. Twice
within a few lines Augustine repeats that the Church even now is the
kingdom
of Christ. He also, as in the book of Revelation, sees men
seated
upon thrones — and who are they? Those who now rule the Church. This
view
presupposes a political government, and even when the Emperor exercises
it — even when he employs it against the Pope — he, the Emperor, is
still
a member of the Church, a Deo coronatus, whose power rests on
religious
premisses; so that we cannot speak of a real separation of State and
Church,
but at most (as I have already demonstrated in the preface to this
chapter)
of a dispute concerning competency within the Church. The religious
basis
of this view goes back to Christ himself; for, as I remarked in the
third
chapter of this book: the life and doctrines of Christ point
unmistakably
to a condition which can only be realised by community. † It is just at
this point that the ageing Empire and youthful Christianity discovered,
or thought they discovered, a certain affinity to each other. Without
doubt
each of the contracting parties was actuated by very different
* To prevent misunderstanding I wish to add that according to Lutheran
doctrine also, the believer is even here in possession of everlasting
life;
but this is a view (as I have fully shown in chaps. v., vii. and x.),
which
differs in toto from the Jewish-Roman one, since it rests not
on
chronistic consecutiveness, but on present experience (as in the case
of
Christ).
† See vol. i. p. 245.
165
STATE
motives, the one
by political, the other by religious ones; presumably they were both
mistaken;
the Empire can have had no idea that it was sacrificing its temporal
power
for ever, the pure Christianity of the old days cannot have thought
that
it was throwing itself into the arms of Heathendom, and would
immediately
be stifled by it; that, however, matters not; from their union, from
their
fusion and mutual blending the Roman Church originated. Now according
to
the definition of Augustine, which is acknowledged to be orthodox, the
Church embraces all human beings in the world, * and every man, be he
“prince
or serf, merchant or teacher, apostle or doctor,“ has to regard his
activity
here on earth as an office assigned to him in the Church, in
hac ecclesia suum munus. † I cannot see by
what
loophole a State or, still more so, a nation was to escape, and,
establishing
itself as an independent entity opposed to the Church, was to say to
her,
“You, henceforth, mind your own business, in the things of the world I
shall rule as I like.“ Such a supposition is illogical and senseless,
it
nullifies the idea of the Roman Church. This idea obviously admits of
no
limitation, either mentally or materially, and when the Pope, in his
capacity
as representative of the Church, as its pater ac moderator,
claims
the right to speak the decisive word in secular things, that is quite
as
justifiable and logical as the assertion of Theodosius, in his famous
decree
against heretics, that he, the Emperor, is guided “by heavenly wisdom,“
or as the decision of dogmatic questions by Charlemagne
* Ecclesia est populus fidelis per universum orbem dispersus,
adopted in i. 10, 2, of the Catechismus ex decreto Concilii
Tridentini.
But since from Theodosius onwards faith was to be compulsory and
unbelief
or heterodoxy high treason, since, moreover, schismatics and heretics
are
still “under the power of the Church“ (as above, i. 10, 9), this
definition
embraces all men without exception, omnes humanae creaturae,
as Boniface correctly said in the passages quoted above.
† Cat. Trid., i. 10, 25.
166 STATE
on his own
authority.
For the Church embraces everything, body and soul, earth and heaven,
its
power is unlimited and he who represents it — no matter who he be — has
in consequence absolute authority. Gregory II. even, no grandiloquent
prince
of the Church, shows that the “secular power must be subordinate to the
spiritual“ (i.e., the Roman Church); to William the Conqueror he
writes that the apostolic power is answerable to God for all things; in
a letter of October 23, 1236 (in which he emphasises especially that
the
rights of the Emperor are only “transmitted“ by the Church), Gregory
IX.
says: “Just as the representative of Peter has control over all souls,
so he possesses, in the whole world also, a Principality over the
Temporal,
and over men's bodies, and governs the Temporal with the rein of
justice“;
Innocent IV. asserts that the right of the Church to judge spiritualiter
de temporalibus may not be impugned. And
since
all these words, unambiguous as they are, yet gave scope for much
casuistic
hair-splitting, the honest and able Boniface VIII. dissipated all
misunderstanding
by a bull, Ausculta fili of
December
5, 1301, addressed to the King of France, in which he writes: “God has
notwithstanding our lack of merit set us over Kings and Empires and
laid
upon us the yoke of apostolic bondage, in order that we may in his name
and according to his will uproot, tear down, destroy, scatter, build up
and plant... Let no one therefore, beloved son, persuade thee that thou
hast no superior and art not subject to the supreme hierarch of the
ecclesiastical
hierarchy. Whoever holds this view is a fool; whoever obstinately
asserts
it is an unbeliever and not of the fold of the good Shepherd.“ Further
on Boniface orders that several French bishops shall come to Rome, in
order
that the Pope may with their help determine what may help “to remedy
the
abuses and contribute to the salvation and the good administration of
the
Empire“: on this
167 STATE
the Roman Catholic
bishop Hefele makes the true remark, “But whoever possesses the right
to
regulate, to uproot, to build and to see to good administration in an
Empire
is the real head of it.“ * It is similarly only consistent, since all
men
on earth are subordinate to the Church and are incorporated in it, that
the final authority over all countries should also be vested in it.
Over
certain countries, as, for example, Spain, Hungary, England, &c.,
the
Church at once claimed sovereign jurisdiction; † in the case of all the
others it reserved as its right the confirmation and coronation of the
Kings, it deposed them and nominated new Kings to fill the places of
those
deposed (as in the case of the Carolingians) — for, as Thomas Aquinas
states
in his De regimine principum,
“Just
as the body only derives strength and capacity from the soul, so the
temporary
authority of princes is derived from the spiritual authority of Peter
and
his successors.“ ‡ The kingly office is, in fact, as shown above,
nothing
more and nothing less than a munus within the Church, within
the
civitas
Dei. For this reason, too, no heretic is a legitimate King. As
early
as 1535 Paul III. solemnly dispensed all English subjects from
obedience
to their King, § and in the year 1569 Pius V. made this measure
still
more stringent, in that the great Queen Elizabeth was not only deposed
and
* Konziliengeschichte, vi. 331. The Latin text of the Church
laws
says: ad evellendum, destruendum, dispergendum, dissipandum,
aedificandum, atque plantandum; later ordinare
... ad bonum et prosperum regimen regni. The
former quotations are from the same work, v. 163, 164, 1003, 1131; vi.
325-327.
† The property-right over Hungary is based upon the pretended gift of
King
Stephen; Spain, England (and, it may be, France also) are regarded as
included
in the forged gift of Constantine, according to which “the kingly power
in all the provinces of Italy, as also in the western regions“ (in
partibus occidentalibus) should be conceded
to
the Papal stool (cf. Hefele, v. 11).
‡ I quote from Bryce: Le Saint Empire Romain Germanique,
p. 134.
§ Hergenröther: Hefele's Konziliengeschichte,
continuation,
ix. 896.
168
STATE
deprived of “all
her property,“ but every Englishman also who would dare to obey her was
threatened with excommunication. * In consequence of this the whole
political
development of Europe since the Reformation is not approved by the
Church;
it makes a virtue of necessity, but it does not acknowledge the events:
it protested against the religious Peace of Augsburg, raised its voice
with still greater solemnity against the Westphalian Peace and declared
it “for all time null and void,“ † it refused its assent to the
findings
of the Vienna Congress. Over the extra-European world also the Church
has
with praiseworthy consistency claimed sole authority, and by two bulls,
on May 3 and 4, 1493, it has “in the name of God“ presented to Spain
all
discovered or still-to-be-discovered lands west of the 25th degree of
longitude
(to the west of Greenwich), to Portuguese Africa, &c. ‡
* Green: History
of the English People (Eversley ed.) iv. 265, 270.
This is not an abandoned standpoint, for it is only in our time that
Felton,
the man who had nailed this bull to the doors of the Bishop of London,
was beatified by Leo XIII.!
† Phillips: Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, p. 807, and the bull
mentioned
there, Zelo domus. Indeed, not only the Roman Pope but also the
Roman Emperor protested in this case, in that he claimed to possess
“reserve
rights,“ but at the same time refused to explain what he meant by
these;
what he thus safeguarded was simply the never abandoned claim to potestas
universalis, that is, absolute supreme power, in other words, the
Emperor
remained true to the Roman universal conception. (See the
remarks
on this in Siegel: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, § 100.)
‡ Pope Alexander VI. says in these bulls that the gift is presented
“out
of pure generosity“ and “in virtue of the authority of Almighty God,
conferred
on him by Saint Peter“ (cf. the note to p. 141).
Absolute authority over everything temporal cannot go further, unless
some
one should arrogate the authority to make a gift of the moon. The bull
Inter
cetera of May 4, 1493, is found printed in extenso in
Fiske's
Discovery
of America, 1892, ii. 580 f. In the same book, vol. i. p. 454, we
find
a detailed account of the accompanying circumstances, &c., as also
a thorough discussion of the difficulties arising from the vagueness of
the Papal text. For the Pontifex maximus, although professing
to
speak ex certa scientia, cedes to the Spaniards all discovered
and
still-to-be-discovered lands (omnes insulas et terras
firmas inventas et inveniendas, detectas et detegendas)
which lie west and
169 STATE
I intentionally limit myself to these few indications and quotations,
taken
from the books embraced by my modest library; I should only need to go
to a public library to come upon the track of hundreds of proofs
perhaps
even more to the purpose; I remember, for example, that in later bulls
the statement that the Pope possesses “plenitude of power over all
peoples,
Empires and princes“ recurs with slight variations almost like a
formula;
but I am far from desiring to give a scientific proof; on the contrary,
I should like to convince the reader that here it is not a question of
what this or that Pope or Emperor, this or that Church assembly or
legal
authority has said (about which there has already been enough paper
wasted
and time lost), but that the constraining element lies in the idea
itself,
in the striving after the Absolute, the Limitless. Once we realise this
our judgment is remarkably enlightened; we become juster towards the
Roman
Church and juster towards its opponents; we learn to look for the real
political and, on the whole, morally decisive development in those
countless
places where, and on those countless occasions when, nationalism and,
generally
speaking, individualism revealed themselves and asserted themselves in
opposition to universalism and absolutism. When Charles the Simple
refused
to take the oath of fealty to the Emperor Arnulf, he made a deep breach
in the Romanum imperium, one so deep, indeed, that no later
Emperor,
the
south
(versus Occidentem et Meridiem) of
a definite longitude; but no mathematician has as yet been able to
discover
what geographical region lies “south“ of a “longitude“; and that the
Pope
really meant a longitude cannot be questioned, since he says with
circumstantial
simplicity: fabricando et construendo unam lineam a polo
Arctico
ad polum Antarcticum. Moreover, this gift of
a grossly ignorant Curia exercised an influence which the Curia was far
from foreseeing, for it constrained the Spaniards to reach farther and
farther towards the west, till they found the Straits of Magellan, and
compelled the Portuguese to discover the eastern passage to India
around
the Cape of Good Hope. More details on this point in the section
on “Discovery“ in the next chapter.
170 STATE
most important
not excepted, could ever again attempt to resuscitate in all its
fulness
the true universal plan of Charlemagne. William the Conqueror, an
orthodox
prince and pious churchman, whose services to strict Church discipline
are almost unrivalled, nevertheless replied to the Pope, when the
latter
claimed the newly conquered England as ecclesiastical property, and
wished
to invest him with it as a fief, “Never have I taken an oath of fealty,
nor shall I ever do so.“ Such are the men who gradually broke the
secular
power of the Church. They believed in the Trinity, in the similarity of
essence of Father and Son, in purgatory, in everything that the priests
wished — but the Roman political ideal, the theocratic civitas Dei,
was utterly alien to them; their power of conception was still too
undeveloped,
their character too independent, their mental nature too unbroken,
indeed
mostly too rudely personal, to enable them even to understand it. And
Europe
was full of such Teutonic princes. A considerable time before the
Reformation,
the insubordination of the small Spanish kingdoms had, in spite of
Catholic
bigotry, given the Curia much trouble, and France, the eldest son of
the
Church, had succeeded in asserting its Pragmatic Sanction, which was
the
beginning of a clean separation between the ecclesiastical and the
secular
State.
This was the true struggle in the State.
And whoso realises this must see that Rome was beaten all along the
line.
The Catholic States have gradually emancipated themselves no less than
the others. Certainly they have sacrificed certain important privileges
in connection with the investiture of the bishops and so forth, but not
all, and to make up for this, most of them have gone so far in regard
to
religious toleration that they recognise simultaneously several creeds
as State religions and pay their clergy. The contrast to the
171 STATE
Roman ideal cannot
possibly be formulated more incisively. In reference to the State, in
consequence,
a statistic of “Catholics“ and “Protestants“ has now no meaning. These
words express little more than the belief in definite incomprehensible
mysteries, and we may assert that the great practical and political
idea
of Rome, that Imperium transfigured by religion and faultlessly
absolutist,
is unknown to the great majority of Roman Catholics to-day, and if it
were
known, would find as little approval from them as from non-Catholics. A
natural consequence of this — of this only, let it be noted — is that
religious
contrasts have also disappeared. * For as soon as Rome's ideal is
merely
a credo, it stands on the same footing as other Christian
sects;
each one of course believes that it possesses the one and only complete
truth; not one, so far as I am aware, has abandoned Catholicism in this
sense; the various Protestant doctrines are by no means essentially
new,
they are merely a return to the former state of the Christian faith, a
discarding of the heathen elements that have crept in. Only a few sects
do not acknowledge the so-called Apostles' Creed, which is not even
derived
from Rome, but from Gaul, and thus owes its introduction to the Empire,
not to the Papacy. † The Roman Church, therefore, when regarded merely
as a religious creed, is, at best, merely a prima inter pares,
which
even at the present day can no longer claim one-half of the Christian
world
as its own, and, unless a revolution takes place, will in a hundred
years
scarcely embrace a third. ‡
* Disappeared, I mean, everywhere except where the activity of the one
sole society of Jesus has recently shown hatred and contempt of
fellow-citizens
who hold different views.
† See Adolf Harnack: Das apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis,
27th ed. (especially p. 14 f: “The Empire of Charlemagne has given Rome
its symbol“).
‡ Here I intentionally make my estimate as moderate as possible.
According
to the calculations of Ravenstein the number of Protestants has
increased
almost fivefold in the nineteenth century, while that of
172 STATE
Even though
Luther,
in faithful imitation of the Roman view and in contrast to Erasmus,
teaches
the doctrine of systematic intolerance, and Calvin publishes a work to
demonstrate “jure gladii coercendos esse haereticos,“
the layman who lives in a purely secular State will never understand
that,
never admit that, no matter to what creed he belongs. Our ancestors
were
not intolerant by nature, nor are they so now. Intolerance is a result
solely of universalism: he who aims at something outwardly unlimited
must
make the inner limits all the narrower. The Jew — who might be called a
born freethinker — had been persuaded that he possessed the whole
indivisible
truth, and with it a right to world-empire: for this he had to
sacrifice
his personal freedom, let his intellect be gagged and foster hatred
instead
of love in his heart. Frederick II., perhaps the least orthodox Emperor
that has ever lived, had nevertheless led astray by the dream of a
Roman
universal empire, to ordain that all heretics should be declared
infamous
and outlawed, that their goods should be confiscated, and they
themselves
burned, or, should they recant, be punished with lifelong imprisonment;
he at the same time ordered the princes, who had not respected his
pretended
imperial prerogatives, to be blinded and buried alive.
THE
DELUSION OF THE UNLIMITED
Now if this struggle between nationalism and universalism, the struggle
against the late Roman legacy —
the
Catholics has not been doubled. The chief reason for this is the more
rapid
multiplication of Protestant peoples; but there is another fact,
namely,
that those who go over to Catholicism do not cover a tenth of those who
leave it; and thus it is that in the United States, despite the
constant
immigration of Catholics and the increase of their total numbers, there
is a rapid decrease relatively. The above estimate is therefore a very
cautious one.
173 STATE
which occupies more than a thousand
years and only then leaves free scope for the conflict concerning the
inner
shaping of the State — has been portrayed by me from a more general
standpoint,
I have done so especially because I am keeping in view the nineteenth
century.
And though this is not the place to enter into details concerning that
century, yet I should like at least to indicate this connection. For it
would be a fatal error to suppose that the struggle was brought to an
end
by the wreck of the old political ideal. It is true that the opponents
of universalism are no longer buried alive, nor are men burnt alive
nowadays
for asserting, like Hus (who followed Augustine), that Peter neither
was
nor is the head of the Church; Prince Bismarck, too, could issue laws
and
repeal laws without having actually to go to Canossa and stand there
for
three days before the gate in the shirt of the penitent. The old forms
will never return. But the ideas of unlimited Absolutism are still very
vigorous in our midst, not only within the old consecrated frame of the
Roman Church, but also outside it. And wherever we see them at work —
whether
as Jesuitism or as Socialism, as philosophical systems or as industrial
monopoly — there we must recognise (or we shall have to recognise it to
our cost later) that the outwardly Unlimited demands the double
sacrifice
of personality and of freedom.
As regards the
Church,
we should indeed reveal little insight, were we in any way to
depreciate
the power of so wonderful an organism as the Roman hierarchy. No one
can
prophesy to what it may yet attain should its lucky star again be in
the
ascendant. When in the year 1871 the excommunicatio major,
with all the canonical consequences attached to it, was pronounced
against
Döllinger, the police of Munich had to adopt special measures to
protect
his life; a single fact like this gives us a glimpse into abysses of
fanatical
univer-
174
STATE
salist delusion
which might one day yawn beneath our feet in much greater dimensions. *
But I should not like to lay much stress upon such things, nor upon the
underhand methods of the above-mentioned conspiracy of persecuting
chaplains
and their creatures; it is in good not in evil that the source of all
strength
lies. In the idea of Catholicity, continuity, infallibility, divine
appointment,
all-embracing continuous revelation, God's Kingdom upon earth, the
representative
of God as supreme judge, every worldly career as the fulfilment of an
ecclesiastical
office — in all this there lies so much that is good and beautiful that
honest belief in it must lend it strength. And this faith, as I think I
have convincingly shown, permits no separation between Temporal and
Eternal,
between Worldly and Heavenly. In the very nature of this direction of
will
lies the Unlimited: it serves as basis to the structure which the will
raises; every limitation is a disturbance, an obstruction, an evil to
be
overcome as soon as possible; for limitation — were it to be recognised
as existing by right — could mean nothing less than the sacrifice of
the
idea itself. Catholic means universal, that is, an all-embracing unity.
Therefore every truly orthodox, intelligent Catholic is virtually —
though
not actually, nor at the present day — a universalist, and that means
an
enemy of nations and of all individual freedom. Most of them do not
* In fact the excommunicated person is, according to Catholic Church
law,
an outlaw: In Gratian (Causa 23, p. 5, c. 47, according to
Gibbon)
we find the statement: Homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos
trucidant.
But in former centuries (by Decree of Urban II.) the Church had imposed
penances upon the murderer of one excommunicated “in case his motive
was
not an absolutely pure one.“ Our beloved nineteenth century has,
however,
gone a step farther, and Cardinal Turrecremata, “the foremost supporter
of Papal infallibility,“ has expressed in his commentary on Gratian the
opinion that, according to the orthodox doctrine, the murderer of an
excommunicated
man does not require to do penance! (cf. Döllinger, Briefe
und Erklärungen über die vatikanischen Dekrete, 1890, pp.
103, 131, 140).
175 STATE
know this and
many will indignantly deny it, but yet the fact remains; for the great,
general ideas, the mathematical necessary inferences of thought and
consequences
of actions, are much more powerful than the individual with his
goodwill
and good intentions; here laws of nature prevail. Just as every schism
must of necessity be followed by a further disruption into new schisms,
because here the freedom of the individual is the primary cause, so
every
Catholicism exercises an irresistible power of integration; the
individual
cannot resist it any more than a piece of iron can resist the magnet.
But
for the great distance between Rome and Constantinople — great, having
regard to the means of travel then available — the Oriental schism
would
never have taken place; but for the superhuman power of Luther's
personality,
the north of Europe would scarcely have succeeded in freeing itself
from
Rome. Cervantes, a faithful believer, is fond of quoting the remark,
“Behind
the Cross lurks the Devil.“ That surely is meant to indicate that the
mind,
once launched on this path of absolute religion, of blind belief in
authority,
knows no limit and brooks no obstruction. And, as a matter of fact,
this
very Devil has since then ruined the noble nation of Don Quixote. And
when
we further consider that the universalist and absolutist ideas from
which
the Church originated were a product of general decline, a last hope
and
a real safety-anchor for a raceless, chaotic human Babel (see
pp.
43,
71,
121),
we shall scarcely be able to refrain from thinking that from similar
causes
similar results would again ensue, and that, accordingly, in the
present
condition of the world, many things would tend once more to confirm the
universal Church in its claims and plans. In view of this it would be
only
proper for those who with Goethe seek to attain “inner limitlessness“
to
emphasise as strongly as possible outward limitations, that is, free
personality,
pure race and
176
STATE
independent
nations.
And while Leo XIII. with perfect right (from his standpoint) refers our
contemporaries to Gregory VII. and Thomas Aquinas, such men will point
with equally good right to Charles the Simple and William the
Conqueror,
to Walther von der Vogelweide and Petrus Waldus, to that blacksmith who
refused to obey the “alien“ Pope, and to the great silent movement of
the
guilds, of the city leagues, of the secular universities, which, at the
beginning of the epoch of which I speak, began to make their influence
felt throughout all Europe as a first token of a new, national,
anti-universal
shaping of society, a new, absolutely anti-Roman culture.
In this conflict it is not merely a question of the national secular
State
in opposition to the universal ecclesiastical State; wherever we meet
universalism
there anti-nationalism and anti-individualism are its necessary
correlatives.
Nor does it need to be conscious universalism, it is sufficient that an
idea aims at something absolute, something limitless. Thus, for
example,
all consistently reasoned Socialism leads to the absolute State. To
call
Socialists point-blank “a party dangerous to the State,“ as is usually
done, is only to give rise to one of those confusions of which our age
is so fond. Certainly Socialism signifies a danger to the individual
national
States, as it does, on the whole, to the principle of individualism,
but
it is no danger to the idea of the State. It honestly admits its
internationalism;
its character is revealed, however, not in disintegration, but in a
wonderfully
developed organisation, copied, as it were, from a machine. In both
points
it betrays its affinity to Rome. In fact, it represents the same
Catholic
idea as the Church, although it grasps it by the other end. For that
reason,
too, there is no room in its system for individual freedom and
diversity,
for personal originality. Ce qui lie tous les socialistes, c'est la
haine
177
STATE
de la
liberté,
... as Flaubert says. * He who tears down the outward barriers, puts up
inner ones. Socialism is imperialism in disguise; it will hardly be
realisable
without hierarchy and Primacy; in the Catholic Church it finds a
pattern
of socialistic, anti-individualistic organisation. An absolutely
similar
movement towards the Limitless, with the same inevitable consequence of
a suppression of the Individual, is encountered in the realm of great
commercial
and industrial undertakings. Read, for example, in the Wirtschafts-
und handelspolitische Rundschau of 1897, the articles by R. E. May
on the increase of syndicates and the consequent “international
centralisation
of production, as of capital“ (p. 34 f.). This development in the
direction
of limited liability companies and colossal production by syndicates
means
a war to the knife against personality, which can assert itself only
within
narrow limits — whether it be as merchant or as manufacturer. And this
movement extends from the individual person, as is evident, to the
personality
of nations. In a recent farce a merchant is represented as proudly
exclaiming
to every new-comer, “Do you know? I am transformed into a Company.“ If
this economic tendency remained without counterpoise, the peoples could
soon say of themselves, “We are transformed into an international
Company.“
And if I may at one mighty leap spring over to a province very far
remote
from the economic one, to seek for further examples of the aspirations
of universalism in our midst, I should like to call attention to the
great
Thomistic movement, which was called forth by the Papal Encyclical of
the
year 1879, Aeternis Patris, and is now of such compass that
even
scientific books from a certain camp have already the hardihood to
declare
Thomas Aquinas the greatest philosopher of all times, to tear down
everything
which — to the everlasting praise of humanity —
* Correspondence iii. 269.
178
STATE
has since been
thought by Teutonic thinkers, and thus to lead men back to the
thirteenth
century and once more to cast them into the intellectual and moral
fetters
which, in the obstinate struggle for freedom, they have since then
gradually
broken and thrown off. And what is it that they praise in Thomas
Aquinas?
His universality! The fact that he has established a comprehensive
system,
in which all contrasts are reconciled, all contradictory laws annulled,
all questionings of the human reason answered. He is called a second
Aristotle:
“What Aristotle with but vague conception stammers, received perfectly
clear and eloquent expression from Thomas Aquinas.“ * Like the
Stagyrite,
he knows everything, from the nature of the Godhead to the nature of
earthly
bodies and the qualities of the resurrected body; but, being Christian,
he knows much more than Aristotle, for he possesses Revelation as a
basis.
Now surely no thinker will be inclined to make light of the
achievements
of a Thomas Aquinas; it would be presumption for me to venture to
praise
him, but I may confess that I have read accounts of his whole system
with
wonder and admiration and have carefully studied certain of his
writings.
But what is the important matter for a practical man especially in
connection
with the aim of this chapter? It is that Thomas builds his system —
which
is “more universal than any other“ — upon two assumptions: philosophy
must
unconditionally submit and become ancilla ecclesiae, a handmaid
of the Church; moreover, it must humble itself to the position of an ancilla
Aristotelis, a handmaid of Aristotle. Ob-
* Fr. Abert (Professor of Theology in the University of Würzburg):
Sancti
Thomae Aquinatis compendium theologiae, 1896, p. 6. The sentence
quoted
is a panegyrical paraphrase of an ancient judgment which was meant
quite
differently. With all respect for the achievements of Thomas, it is a
monstrous
error of judgment, if not a case of culpable misleading, to put him on
an equality with Aristotle, the epoch-making systematiser and moulder (see
vol. i. p. 49).
179 STATE
viously it is
always the same principle: allow your hands and feet to be fettered and
you will see miracles! Hang up before your eyes definite dogmas (which
were decreed in the centuries of mankind's deepest humiliation by vote
of majority, by bishops, many of whom could neither read nor write) and
presuppose, in addition, that the first groping efforts of a brilliant,
but, as has been proved, very one-sided Hellenic systematiser express
the
eternal, absolute and complete truth, and I shall give you a universal
system! That is an attack, a dangerous attack upon the innermost
freedom
of man! Far from being inwardly limitless, as Goethe wished, he has now
had two narrow bonds forged around his soul and his brain by an alien
hand;
that is the price which we have to pay for “universal knowledge.“ In
any
case, long before Leo XIII. issued his Encyclical, a universal system
resting
on similar principles had grown out of the Protestant Church, that of
Georg
Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. A Protestant Thomas Aquinas: that tells us
everything.
And yet there had been an Immanuel Kant, the Luther of philosophy, the
destroyer of spurious knowledge, the annihilator of all systems, who
had
pointed out to us “the limits of our thinking power“ and warned us
“never
to venture with speculative reason beyond the boundary of experience“;
but, after assigning to us such strict and definite outward limits, he
had thrown open, as no philosopher had done before him, the doors to
the
inner world of the Limitless and thus revealed to us the home of the
free
man. *
* More details regarding Thomas Aquinas and Kant in the section
on “Philosophy“ in the following chapter. For the sake of
completeness
it may be mentioned that we have a Jewish as well as a Protestant
Thomas
Aquinas, namely, Spinoza, the maker of a universal system, the “renewer
of the old Hebraic Cabbala“ (i.e., of the magic secret
doctrine),
as Leibniz calls him. Spinoza has this also in common with the other
two,
that he has not enriched with a single creative thought either
mathematics,
his special province, or science, his hobby.
180
STATE
LIMITATION
BASED ON PRINCIPLE
These cursory indications are merely intended to show in how many
provinces
the struggle between individualism and anti-individualism, nationalism
and anti-nationalism (internationalism is another word for the same
thing),
freedom and non-freedom is still raging and will probably rage for
ever.
In the second book (not yet published) I shall have to enter more
fully,
in as far as they affect the present, into themes scarcely touched upon
here. But I should not like in the meantime to be considered a
pessimist.
Seldom have the consciousness of race, national feeling, and suspicious
safe-guarding of the rights of personality been so active and vigorous
as in our time; a phase of feeling is passing over the nations at the
close
of the nineteenth century which reminds one of the dull cry of the
hunted
animal, when the noble creature at bay suddenly turns, determined to
fight
for its life. And in our case resolution means victory. For the great
attractiveness
of every Universalist idea is due to the weakness of men; the strong
man
turns from it and finds in his own breast, in his own family, in his
own
people, the Limitless, which he would not surrender for the whole
cosmos
with its countless stars. Goethe, from whom I derived the leading idea
of this chapter, has in another passage beautifully expressed how the
Limitless,
the Catholic Absolute, is in consonance with a sluggish disposition:
- Im
Grenzenlosen sich
zu finden,
- Wird gern
der
Einzelne
verschwinden,
- Da
lös't
sich
aller Überdruss;
- Statt
heissem
Wünschen,
wildem Wollen,
- Statt
läst'gem
Fordern, strengem Sollen,
- Sich
aufzugeben ist
Genuss. *
* Man is but too ready to pass out of sight and take refuge in the
limitless,
where all trouble is at an end. No more fervent wishing, no
181 STATE
Now from these
nation-building Teutons of former generations we can learn that there
is
a higher enjoyment than to surrender, and that is, to assert ourselves.
A conscious national policy, economic movements, science, art, all this
scarcely existed in the olden time, or even did not exist at all; but
what
we see dawning about the thirteenth century, this vividly throbbing
life
in all spheres, this creative power, this “importunate demanding“ of
individual
freedom, had not fallen from heaven, rather had the seed been sown in
the
previous dark centuries: the “wild willing“ had tilled the soil, the
“fervent
wishing“ had tended the delicate blooms. Our Teutonic culture is a
result
of toil and pain and faith — not ecclesiastical, but religious faith.
If
we go lovingly through those annals of our ancient forbears, which tell
us so little and yet so much, what will strike us most is the almost
incredible
strength of the developed sense of duty; for the worst cause, as for
the
best, every one yields up his life unquestioningly. From Charlemagne,
who
after over-busy days spends his night in laborious writing exercises,
to
that splendid blacksmith who refused to forge fetters for the opponent
of Rome, everywhere we find “the stern Shall.“ Did these men know what
they wanted? I scarcely think so. But they knew what they did not want,
and that is the beginning of all practical wisdom. * Thus Charlemagne,
more
wild willing, no more importunate demanding! no more stern “shall.“ To
yield is joy!
* I cannot refrain from quoting here an infinitely profound political
remark
of Richard Wagner: “We need only know what we do not wish, then we
shall
with the spontaneous necessity of nature attain quite surely to what we
do wish, and the latter only becomes perfectly clear and conscious to
ourselves
when we have attained it: for the condition in which we have put aside
what we do not wish is just the one which we desired to reach. It is
thus
that the people acts, and for that reason it acts in the only right
way.
You, however, consider it incapable, because it does not know what it
wants:
but what know you? Can you think and comprehend anything but what is
present
and therefore attained? You could imagine it, arbitrarily fancy it,
182
STATE
for example,
indulged
many a childish illusion in regard to what he wished, and committed
many
a fatal error; but in what he did not wish he always hit the nail on
the
head: no interference on the part of the Pope, no worshipping of
images,
no granting of privileges to the nobility, &c. In his willing
Charles
was in many ways a universalist and absolutionist, in his non-willing
he
proved himself a Teuton. Exactly the same attracted us in the case of
Dante
(p. 144 f.): his political idea of the future was a
cobweb of the brain, his energetic rejection of all temporal claims of
the Church a benefit of far-reaching influence.
And so we see that here, in the State, as in all human things,
everything
depends on the fundamental characteristics of the mental attitude, not
on cognition. The mental attitude (Gesinnung *) is the rudder,
it
decides the direction and with the direction the goal — even though
this
should long remain invisible. The conflict in the State was now, as I
hope
I have shown, in the very first place such a struggle between two
directions,
i.e.,
between the steersmen. As soon as the one had finally grasped the
rudder
firmly, the further development towards greater and greater freedom,
more
and more distinct nationalism and individualism, was natural and
inevitable
— just as inevitable as the contrary development of Caesarism and
Papacy
towards ever more restricted freedom.
Nothing is absolute in the world; even freedom and non-freedom denote
only
two directions, and neither the individual nor the nation can stand
alone
and perfectly independent; they surely belong to a whole, in which
but
not know it. Only what the people has achieved can you know, till then
may you be satisfied with recognising clearly what you do not want,
denying
what should rightly be denied, destroying what should be destroyed“ (Nachgelassene
Schriften, 1895, p. 118).
* The root of Sinn denotes a journey, a way, a going; Gesinnung
therefore means a direction in which a man moves.
183 STATE
every unit
supports
and is supported. However, on that evening of June 15, 1215, when the Magna
Charta came into being — crafted, discussed, negotiated and signed
on this one day by the “wild willing“ of Teutons — the direction was
decided
for all Europe. The representative of universalism, it is true — the
representative
of the doctrine that “to surrender is enjoyment“ — hastened to declare
this law null and void and to excommunicate its authors all and sundry;
but the hand kept firm hold of the rudder; the Roman Imperium was bound
to sink, while the free Teutons made ready to enter into possession of
the empire of the world.
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Last
update:
March 27th, 2004
