Houston Chamberlain- Foundations of the 19th century Commented [(MR1]: https://archive.

org/stream/Foundati
onsOfThe19thCentury/FoundationsOfThe19thCentury-
HoustonChamberlain_djvu.txt
NB: ALSO LOOK AT HIS CHAPTERS ON THE JEWS;
Common theme of this time: People were thinking in Racial terms
[[ look into Chamberlains (or Ripleys?) distinction between the Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, the latter
which he considered the most impure, for their racial makeup was diluted with other neighbouring races
-from Wiki: By the early 20th century, Ripley's tripartite Nordic/Alpine/Mediterranean model was well established. Most
19th century race-theorists like Arthur de Gobineau, Otto Ammon, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Houston Stewart
Chamberlain preferred to speak of "Aryans," "Teutons," and "Indo-Europeans" instead of "Nordic Race". The British
German racialist Houston Stewart Chamberlainconsidered the Nordic race to be made up of Celtic and Germanic
peoples, as well as some Slavs. Chamberlain called those people Celt-Germanic peoples, and his ideas would
influence Adolf Hitler's Nazi ideology.]]
)
lxiii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

which I arrive, I do not feel called upon to anticipate them here, as they
can only carry conviction after consideration of all the arguments which I
shall have to bring forward in their support.

The Foundations

In this first book it has been my task to endeavour to reveal the bases
upon which the nineteenth century rests; this seemed to me, as I have
said, the most difficult and important part of the whole scheme; for this
reason I have devoted two volumes to it. In the sphere of history
understanding means seeing the evolution of the present from the past;
even when we are face to face with a fact which cannot be explained
further, as happens in the case of every pre-eminent personality and
every nation of strong individuality at its first appearance on the stage of
history, we see that these are linked with the past, and it is from this
point of connection that we must start, if we wish to form a correct
estimate of their significance. If we draw an imaginary line separating the
nineteenth from all preceding centuries, we destroy at one stroke all
possibility of understanding it critically. The nineteenth century is not
the child of the former ages for a child begins life afresh rather it is
their direct product; mathematically considered, a sum; physiologically, a
stage of life. We have inherited a certain amount of knowledge,
accomplishments, thoughts, &c, we have further inherited a definite
distribution of economic forces, we have inherited errors and truths,
conceptions, ideals, superstitions: many of these things have grown so
familiar that any other conditions would be inconceivable; many which
promised well have become stunted, many have shot up so suddenly that
they have almost broken their connection with the aggregate life, and
while the roots of these new flowers reach down to forgotten generations,
1
their fantastic

lxiv AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

blossoms are taken for something absolutely new. Above all we have
inherited the blood and the body by which and in which we live.

Whoever takes the admonition "Know thyself seriously will soon

recognise that at least nine-tenths of this "self do not really belong to

himself. And this is true also of the spirit of a century. The pre-eminent
individual, who is able to realise his physical position in the universe and
to analyse his intellectual inheritance, can attain to a relative freedom;
he then becomes at least conscious of his own conditional position, and
though he cannot transform himself, he can at least exercise some
influence upon the course of further development; a whole century, on
the other hand, hurries unconsciously on as fate impels it: its human
equipment is the fruit of departed generations, its intellectual treasure
corn and chaff, gold, silver, ore and clay is inherited, its tendencies
and deviations result with mathematical necessity from movements that
have gone before. Not only, therefore, is it impossible to compare or to
determine the characteristic features, the special attributes and the
achievements of our century, without knowledge of the past, but we are
not even able to make any precise statement about it, if we have not first
of all become clear with regard to the material of which we are physically
and intellectually composed. This is, I repeat, the most important
problem.

The Turning-point

My object in this book being to connect the present with the past, I
have been compelled to sketch in outline the history of that past. But,
inasmuch as my history has to deal with the present, that is to say, with
a period of time which has no fixed limit, there is no case for a strictly
defined beginning. The

lxv Author's Introduction

nineteenth century points onward into the future, it points also back into
2
the past: in both cases a limitation is allowable only for the sake of
convenience, it does not lie in the facts. In general I have regarded the
year 1 of the Christian era as the beginning of our history and have given
a fuller justification of this view in the introduction to the first part : but
it will be seen that I have not kept slavishly to this scheme. Should we
ever become true Christians, then certainly that which is here merely
suggested, without being worked out, would become an historical
actuality, for it would mean the birth of a new race: perhaps the twenty-
fourth century, into which, roughly speaking, the nineteenth throws faint
shadows, will be able to draw more definite outlines. Compelled as I have
been to let the beginning and the end merge into an undefined
penumbra, a clearly drawn middle line becomes all the more
indispensable to me, and as a date chosen at random could not be
satisfactory in this case, the important thing has been to fix the turning-
point of the history of Europe. The awakening of the Teutonic peoples to Commented [(MR2]: Turning point in the history of
Europe: Teutonic races (1200)
the consciousness of their all-important vocation as the founders of a
completely new civilisation and culture forms this turning point; the year

1200 can be designated the central moment of this awakening.

Scarcely any one will have the hardihood to deny that the inhabitants
of Northern Europe have become the makers of the world's history. At no
time indeed have they stood alone, either in the past or in the present; on
the contrary, from the very beginning their individuality has developed in
conflict with other individualities, first of all in conflict with that human
chaos composed of the ruins of fallen Rome, then with all the races of the
world in turn; others, too, have exercised influence indeed great
influence upon the destinies of mankind, but then always merely as
opponents of the men from

lxvi AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

the north. What was fought out sword in hand was of but little account;
the real struggle, as I have attempted to show in chaps, vii . and viii. of
this work, was one of ideas; this struggle still goes on to-day. If, however,
the Teutons were not the only peoples who moulded the world's history,
they unquestionably deserve the first place: all those who from the sixth
century onwards appear as genuine shapers of the destinies of mankind,
whether as builders of States or as discoverers of new thoughts and of
3
original art, belong to the Teutonic race. The impulse given by the Arabs
is short-lived; the Mongolians destroy, but do not create anything; the
great Italians of the rinascimento were all born either in the north
saturated with Lombardic, Gothic and Frankish blood, or in the extreme
Germano-Hellenic south; in Spain it was the Western Goths who formed
the element of life; the Jews are working out their "Renaissance" of to-
day by following in every sphere as closely as possible the example of the
Teutonic peoples. From the moment the Teuton awakes, a new world
begins to open out, a world which of course we shall not be able to call
purely Teutonic one in which, in the nineteenth century especially,
there have appeared new elements, or at least elements which formerly
had a lesser share in the process of development, as, for example, the
Jews and the formerly pure Teutonic Slavs, who by mixture of blood have
now become "un-Teutonised" a world which will yet perhaps
assimilate great racial complexes and so lay itself open to new influences
from all the different types, but at any rate a new world and a new
civilisation, essentially different from the Helleno-Roman, the Turanian,
the Egyptian, the Chinese and all other former or contemporaneous
ones. As the "beginning" of this new civilisation, that is, as the moment
when it began to leave its peculiar impress on the world, we can, I think,
fix the thirteenth century. Individuals

lxvii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

such as Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Scotus Erigena and others had
long ago proved their Teutonic individuality by their civilising activity. It

is, however, not individuals, but communities, that make history; these Commented [(MR3]: Individuals, not communities make
history
individuals had been only pioneers. In order to become a civilising power
the Teuton had to awaken and grow strong in the exercise far and wide of
his individual will in opposition to the will of others forced upon him
from outside. This did not take place all at once, neither did it happen at
the same time in all the spheres of life; the choice of the year 1200 as
turning-point is therefore arbitrary, but I hope, in what follows, to be
able to justify it, and my purpose will be gained if I in this way succeed in
doing away with those two absurdities the idea of Middle Ages and
that of a Renaissance by which more than by anything else an
understanding of our present age is not only obscured, but rendered
directly impossible.
4
Abandoning these formulae which have but served to give rise to
endless errors, we are left with the simple and clear view that our whole
civilisation and culture of to-day is the work of one definite race of men,
the Teutonic. * It is untrue that the Teutonic barbarian conjured up the
so-called "Night of the Middle Ages"; this night followed rather upon the
intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the raceless chaos of humanity
which the dying Roman Empire had nurtured; but for the Teuton
everlasting night would have settled upon the world; but for the
unceasing opposition of the non-Teutonic peoples, but for that
unrelenting hostility to everything Teutonic which has not yet died down
among the racial chaos which has never been exterminated, we should
have reached a stage of culture quite different

* Under this designation I embrace the various portions of the one great North
European race, whether "Teutonic" in the narrower Tacitean meaning of the word,
or
Celts or genuine Slavs see chap, vi. for further particulars.

lxviii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

from that witnessed by the nineteenth century. It is equally untrue that

our culture is a renaissance of the Hellenic and the Roman: it was only
after the birth of the Teutonic peoples that the renaissance of past
achievements was possible and not vice versa; and this rinascimento, to
which we are beyond doubt eternally indebted for the enriching of our
life, retarded nevertheless just as much as it promoted, and threw us for
a long time out of our safe course. The mightiest creators of that epoch
a Shakespeare, a Michael Angelo do not know a word of Greek or
Latin. Economic advance the basis of our civilisation takes place in
opposition to classical traditions and in a bloody struggle against false
imperial doctrines. But the greatest mistake of all is the assumption that
our civilisation and culture are but the expression of a general progress
of mankind; not a single fact in history supports this popular belief (as I
think I have conclusively proved in the ninth chapter of this book); and
in the meantime this empty phrase strikes us blind, and we lose sight of

the self-evident fact that our civilisation and culture, as in every

previous and every other contemporary case, are the work of a definite,
5
individual racial type, a type possessing, like everything individual, great
gifts but also insurmountable limitations. And so our thoughts float
around in limitless space, in a hypothetical "humanity," and we pass by
unnoticed that which is concretely presented and which alone effects
anything in history, the definite individuality. Hence the obscurity of our
historical groupings. For if we draw one line through the year 500, and a
second through the year 1500, and call these thousand years the Middle
Ages, we have not dissected the organic body of history as a skilled
anatomist, but hacked it in two like a butcher. The capture of Rome by
Odoacer and by Dietrich of Berne are only episodes in that entry of the
Teutonic

lxix AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

peoples into the history of the world, which went on for a thousand
years: the decisive thing, namely, the idea of the unnational world-
empire, far from receiving its death-blow thereby, for a long time drew
new life from the intervention of the Teutonic races. While, therefore, the
year 1 the (approximate) date of the birth of Christ is a date which
is ever memorable in the history of mankind and even in the mere annals
of events, the year 500 has no importance whatever. Still worse is the
year 1500, for if we draw a line through it we draw it right through the
middle of all conscious and unconscious efforts and developments
economic, political, artistic, scientific which enrich our lives to-day
and are moving onward to a still distant goal. If, however, we insist on
retaining the idea of "Middle Ages" there is an easy way out of the
difficulty: it will suffice if we recognise that we Teutons ourselves,
together with our proud nineteenth century, are floundering in what the
old historians used to call a "Middle Age" a genuine "Middle Age." For
the predominance of the Provisional and the Transitional, the almost
total absence of the Definite, the Complete and the Balanced, are marks
of our time; we are in the "midst" of a development, already far from the
starting-point and presumably still far from the goal.

What has been said may in the meantime justify the rejection of other
divisions; the conviction that I have not chosen arbitrarily, but have
sought to recognise the one great fundamental fact of all modern history,
will be established by the study of the whole work. Yet I cannot refrain
from briefly adducing some reasons to account for my choice of the year
1200 as a convenient central date.

6
lxx Author's Introduction

The Year 1200

If we ask ourselves when it is that we have the first sure indications

that something new is coming into being, a new form of the world in
place of the old shattered ruin, and of the prevailing chaos, we must
admit that they are already to be met with in many places in the twelfth
century (in Northern Italy even in the eleventh), they multiply rapidly in
the thirteenth the glorious century, as Fiske calls it attain to a
glorious early full bloom in the social and industrial centres in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in art in the fifteenth and sixteenth, in
science in the sixteenth and seventeenth, and in philosophy in the
seventeenth and eighteenth. This movement does not advance in a
straight line; in State and Church fundamental principles are at war with
each other, and in the other spheres of life there is far too little
consciousness to prevent men from ever and anon straying from the right
path; but the all-important question we have to ask ourselves is, whether
it is only interests that clash, or whether ideals, suggested by a definite
individuality, are floating before the eyes of men; these ideals we do
possess approximately since the thirteenth century; but we have not yet
attained them, they are floating before us in the distance, and to this fact
is due the feeling that we are still very deficient in the moral equilibrium
and the aesthetic harmony of the ancients, but it is at the same time the
basis of our hope for better things. When we glance backwards we are
indeed entitled to cherish high hopes. And, I repeat, if when looking back
we try to discover when the first shimmer of those rays of hope can be
clearly seen, we find the time to be about the year 1200. In Italy the
movement to found cities had begun in the eleventh century, that
movement which aimed at the same time at the furtherance of trade and
industry and

lxxi AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

the granting of far-reaching rights of freedom to whole classes of the

population, which had hitherto pined under the double yoke of Church
and State; in the twelfth century this strengthening of the core of the
European population had become so widely spread and intensified that
at the beginning of the thirteenth century the powerful Hansa and the
7
Rhenish Alliance of Cities could be formed. Concerning this movement
Ranke writes (Weltgeschichte, iv. 238): "It is a splendid, vigorous
development, which is thus initiated ... the cities constitute a world
power, paving the way for civic liberty and the formation of powerful
States." Even before the final founding of the Hansa, the Magna Charta
had been proclaimed in England, in the year 1215, a solemn
proclamation of the inviolability of the great principle of personal freedom
and personal security. "No one may be condemned except in accordance
with the laws of the land. Right and justice may not be bought nor
refused." In some countries of Europe this first guarantee for the dignity
of man has not to this day become law; but since that June 15, 1215, a

general law of conscience has gradually grown out of it, and whoever
runs counter to this is a criminal, even though he wear a crown. I may
mention another important point in which Teutonic civilisation showed
itself essentially different from all others: in the course of the thirteenth
century slavery and the slave trade disappeared from European countries
(with the exception of Spain). In the thirteenth century money begins to
take the place of natural products in buying and selling; almost exactly
in the year 1200 we see in Europe the first manufacture of paper
without doubt the most momentous industrial achievement till the
invention of the locomotive. It would, however, be erroneous to regard the
advance of trade and the stirring of instincts of freedom as the only
indications of the dawn of a new day. Perhaps

lxxii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

the great movement of religious feeling, the most powerful representative

of which was Francis of Assisi (b. 1 182) is a factor of deeper and more
lasting influence; in it a genuinely democratic impulse makes itself
apparent; the faith and life of men like Francis call in question the
tyranny of Church as of State, and deal a death-blow to the despotism of
money. "This movement," one of the authorities * on Francis of Assisi
writes, "gives men the first forewarning of universal freedom of thought."
At the same moment the avowedly anti-Catholic movement, that of the
Albigenses, came into dangerous prominence in Western Europe. In
another sphere of religious life some equally important steps were taken
at the same time: after Peter Abelard (d. 1 142) had unconsciously
defended the Indo-European conception of religion against the Semitic,
8
especially by emphasising the symbolic character of all religious ideas,
two orthodox schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, made in
the thirteenth century an admission which was just as dangerous for the
church dogma by conceding, in agreement with each other (though they
were otherwise opponents), the right of existence to a philosophy which
differed from theology. And while theoretical thinking here began to
assert itself, other scholars, among whom Albertus Magnus (b. 1 193) and
Roger Bacon (b. 1214) are especially conspicuous, laid the foundations of
modern natural science by turning the attention of men from logical
disputes to mathematics, physics, astronomy and chemistry. Cantor
(Vorlesungen iiber Geschichte der Mathematik, 2 Aufl. ii. 3) says that in
the thirteenth century "a new era in the history of mathematical science"
began; this was especially the work of Leonardo of Pisa, who was the first
to introduce to us the Indian (falsely called Arabian) numerical signs,
and of Jordanus Saxo, of the family of Count Eberstein, who initiated

* Thode, Franz von Assisi, p. 4.

lxxiii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

us into the art of algebraic calculation (also originally invented by the

Hindoos). The first dissection of a human body which was of course
the first step towards scientific medicine took place towards the end of
the thirteenth century, after an interval of one thousand six hundred
years, and it was carried out by Mondino de' Luzzi, of Northern Italy.
Dante, likewise a child of the thirteenth century, also deserves mention
here indeed very special mention. "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra
vita" is the first line of his great poem, and he himself, the first artistic
genius of world-wide importance in the new Teutonic epoch of culture, is
the typical figure at this turning-point of history, the point at which she
has left behind her "the half of her way," and, after having travelled at
break-neck speed downhill for centuries, sets herself to climb the steep,
difficult path on the opposite slope. Many of Dante's sentiments in the
Divina Comedia and in his Tractatus de monarchia appear to us like the
longing glance of the man of great experience out of the social and
political chaos surrounding him, towards a harmoniously ordered world;
and such a glance was possible as a sure sign that the movement had
already begun; the eye of genius is a ray of light that shows the way to
others. *
9
But long before Dante this point must not be overlooked a
poetical creative power had manifested itself

* I am not here thinking of the details of his proofs, coloured as they are by
scholasticism, but of such things as his views on the relation of men to one
another
(Monarchia, I. chaps, iii. and iv.) or on the federation of States, each of which he
says
shall retain its own individuality and its own legislature, while the Emperor, as
"peacemaker" and judge in matters that are "common and becoming to all," shall
form
the bond of union (I. chap. xiv.). In other things Dante himself, as genuine "middle"
figure, allows himself to be very much influenced by the conceptions of his time
and
dwells in poetical Utopias. This point is more fully discussed in chap, vii. , and
especially
in the introduction to chap, viii. of this book.

lxxiv AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

in the heart of the most genuine Teutonic life, in the north, a fact in itself
sufficient to prove how little need we had of a classical revival to enable
us to create incomparable masterpieces of art: in the year 1200,
Chrestien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Walther von der Vogelweide, Gottfried von Strassburg were writing their
poems, and I mention only some of the most famous names, for, as
Gottfried says, "of the nightingales there are many more." And up to this
time the questionable separation of poetry and music (which originated
from the worship of the dead letters) had not taken place: the poet was at
the same time singer; when he invented the "word" he invented for it at
the same time the particular "tone" and the particular "melody." And so
we see music too, the most original art of the new culture, develop just at

the moment when the peculiar individuality of this culture began to show
itself in a perfectly new form as polyphonic harmonious art. The first
master of note in the treatment of counterpoint is the poet and dramatist
Adam de la Halle (b. 1240). With him and so with a genuinely Teutonic
word- and sound-creator begins the development of music in the strict
10
sense, so that the musical authority Gevaert can write: "Desormais Ton
peut considerer ce treizieme siecle, si decrie jadis, comme le siecle
initiateur de tout l'art moderne." Likewise in the thirteenth century those
inspired artists Niccolo Pisano, Cimabue and Giotto revealed their
talents, and to them we are indebted, in the first place, not merely for a
"Renaissance" of the plastic and graphic arts, but above all for the birth
of a perfectly new art, that of modern painting. It was also in the
thirteenth century that Gothic architecture came into prominence (the
"Teutonic style" as Ruhmor rightly wished to call it) almost all
masterpieces of church architecture, the incomparable beauty of which
we to-day admire but cannot

lxxv Author's Introduction

imitate, originate in that one century. In the meantime (shortly before

1200), the first purely secular university had been founded in Bologna, at
which only jurisprudence, philosophy and medicine were taught. * We
see in how many ways a new life began to manifest itself about the year
1200. A few names would prove nothing; but the fact that a movement
embraces all lands and grades of society, that the most contradictory
phenomena point backwards to a similar cause and forwards to a
common goal, proves that we have here to deal not with an accidental
and individual thing but with a great, general process which is maturing
with unconscious imperativeness in the inmost heart of society. And that
peculiar "decline in historical sense and historical understanding about
the middle of the thirteenth century," to which different scholars have
wonderingly called attention, f should be taken also, I think, in this
connection: under the guidance of the Teutonic peoples men have just
begun a new life; they have, so to speak, turned a corner in their course
and even the nearest past has completely vanished from their sight:
henceforth they belong to the future.

It is most surprising to have to chronicle the fact that exactly at this

moment, when the new European world was arising out of chaos, the
discovery of the remaining parts of the world also began, without which
our blossoming Teutonic culture could never have developed its own
peculiar power of expansion: in the second half of the thirteenth century
Marco Polo made expeditions of discovery and thereby laid the
foundations of our still incomplete knowledge of the surface of our
planet. What is gained by this is, in the first place

11
* The theological faculty was not established till towards the end of the fourteenth

century (Savigny).

t See Dollinger, Das Kaisertum Karls des Grossen (Akad. Vortrage iii. 156).

lxxvi AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

and apart from the widening of the horizon, the capability of expansion;
this, however, denotes only something relative; the most important thing
is that European authority may hope within a measurable space of time
to encompass the earth and thereby no longer be exposed, like former
civilisations, to the plundering raids of unlooked for and unbridled
barbaric Powers.

So much to justify my choice of the thirteenth century as separating-

line.

That there is, nevertheless, something artificial in such a choice I have

admitted at the very beginning and I repeat it now; in particular one
must not think that I attribute a special fateful importance to the year
1200: the ferment of the first twelve centuries of the Christian era has of
course not yet ceased, it still confuses thousands and thousands of
intellects, and on the other hand we may cheerfully assert that the new
harmonious world began to dawn in the minds of individuals long before
1200. The rightness or wrongness of such a scheme is revealed only by
its use. As Goethe says: "Everything depends on the fundamental truth,
the development of which reveals itself not so easily in speculation as in
practice: this is the touch-stone of what has been admitted by the
intellect."

DIVISION INTO TWO PARTS

In consequence of this fixing of the turning-point of our history, this

book, which treats of the period up to the year 1800, falls naturally into
two parts: the one deals with the period previous to the year 1200, the
other the period subsequent to that year.

In the first part the origins I have discussed first the legacy of the
12
old world, then the heirs and lastly the fight of the heirs for their
inheritance. As everything new is attached to something already in
existence, some-

lxxvii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

thing older, the first fundamental question is, "What component parts of
our intellectual capital are inherited?" the second, no less important, is,
"Who are we?" Though the answering of these questions may take us
back into the distant past, the interest remains always a present interest,
because in the whole construction of every chapter, as well as in every
detail of the discussion, the one all-absorbing consideration is that of the
nineteenth century. The legacy of the old world forms still an important

often quite inadequately digested portion of the very youngest

world: the heirs with their different natures stand opposed to one
another to-day as they did a thousand years ago; the struggle is as bitter,
as confused as ever; the investigation of the past means therefore at the
same time an examination of the too abundant material of the present.
Let no one, however, regard my remarks on Hellenic art and philosophy,
on Roman history and Roman law, on the teaching of Christ, or, again,
on the Teutonic peoples and the Jews, &c, as independent academic
treatises and apply to them the corresponding standard. I have not
approached these subjects as a learned authority, but as a child of to-
day that desires to understand the living present world and I have
formed my judgments, not from the Aristophanic cloud-cuckoo-land of a
supernatural objectivity, but from that of a conscious Teuton whom
Goethe not in vain has warned:

Was euch nicht angehort,

Musset ihr meiden;

Was euch das Inn 're stort,

Dtirft ihr nicht leiden!

In the eyes of God all men, indeed all creatures, may be equal: but the
divine law of the individual is to maintain and to defend his individuality.
I have formed my idea of Teutonicism on a scale quite as large; which
13
means in this case "as large-heartedly as possible," and

lxxviii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

have not pleaded the cause of any particularism whatever. I have, on the
other hand, vigorously attacked whatever is un-Teutonic, but as I
hope nowhere in an unchivalrous manner.

The fact that the chapter on the entry of the Jews into western history
has been made so long may perhaps demand explanation. For the
subject of this book, so diffuse a treatment would not have been
indispensable; but the prominent position of the Jews in the nineteenth
century, as also the great importance for the history of our time of the
philo- and anti-semitic currents and controversies, made an answer to
the question, "Who is the Jew?" absolutely imperative. Nowhere could I
find a clear and exhaustive answer to this question, so I was compelled
to seek and to give it myself. The essential point here is the question of
religion; and so I have treated this very point at considerable length, not
merely in the fifth , but also in the third and in the seventh chapters. For
I have become convinced that the usual treatment of the "Jewish
question" is altogether and always superficial; the Jew is no enemy of
Teutonic civilisation and culture; Herder may be right in his assertion
that the Jew is always alien to us, and consequently we to him, and no
one will deny that this is to the detriment of our work of culture; yet I Commented [(MR4]: Association with Herder

think that we are inclined to under-estimate our own powers in this

respect and, on the other hand, to exaggerate the importance of the

Jewish influence. Hand in hand with this goes the perfectly ridiculous
and revolting tendency to make the Jew the general scapegoat for all the
vices of our time. In reality the "Jewish peril" lies much deeper; the Jew
is not responsible for it; we have given rise to it ourselves and must
overcome it ourselves. No souls thirst more after religion than the Slavs,
the Celts and the Teutons: their history proves it; it is because of the lack
of a true religion that
lxxix AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
our whole Teutonic culture is sick unto death (as I show in the ninth
Commented [(MR5]: Weve given them too much space;
we have allowed them into our society, into our space;
Gobineau: misagination is a crime against the race;
Gobineau is at the forefront of the objective dealing with
the so-called Jewish Question; NB- look how such ideas
were similar to other thinkers/ publications (sometimes
anonymous)
Some of these ideas build on ideas from the middle ages
Modern antisemitism building on more culturally deeply
embedded attitudes towards the Jews

chapter ), and this will mean its ruin if timely help does not come. We
14
have stopped up the spring that welled up in our own hearts and made
ourselves dependent upon the scanty, brackish water which the
Bedouins of the desert draw from their wells. No people in the world is so
beggarly-poor in religion as the Semites and their half-brothers the Jews;
and we, who were chosen to develop the profoundest and sublimest
religious conception of the world as the light, life and vitalising force of
our whole culture, have with our own hands firmly tied up the veins of
life and limp along like crippled Jewish slaves behind Jehovah's Ark of
the Covenant! Hence my exhaustive treatment of the Jewish question:
my object was to find a broad and strong foundation for so important a
judgment.

The second part the gradual rise of a new world has in these
"Foundations" only one chapter devoted to it, "from the year 1200 to the
year 1800." Here I found myself in a sphere which is pretty familiar even
to the unlearned reader, and it would have been altogether superfluous
to copy from histories of politics and of culture which are within the
reach of all. My task was accordingly limited to shaping and bringing into
clearer range than is usually the case the too abundant material which I
could presume to be known as material; and here again my one
consideration was of course the nineteenth century, the subject of my
work. This chapter stands on the border-line between the two parts, that
now published and what is to follow; many things which in the preceding
chapters could only be alluded to, not fully and systematically discussed,
such for instance as the fundamental importance of Teutonicism for our
new world and the value of our conceptions of progress and degeneration
for the understanding of history, find complete treatment here; on the
other hand, the short

lxxx Author's Introduction

sketch of development in the various spheres of life brings us hurriedly

to the nineteenth century, and the tabular statement concerning
knowledge, civilisation and culture, and their various elements points to
the work of comparison which forms the plan of the supplement and

gives occasion for many an instructive parallel: at the same moment as

we see the Teuton blossom forth in his full strength, as though nothing
had been denied him, and he were hurrying to a limitless goal, we behold
15
also his limitations; and this is very important, for it is upon these last
characteristics that his individuality depends.

In view of certain prejudices I shall probably have to justify myself for

treating State and Church in this chapter as subordinate matters or,
more properly speaking, as phenomena among others, and not the most
important. State and Church form henceforth, as it were, only the
skeleton: the Church is an inner bone structure in which, as is usual,
with advancing age an always stronger tendency to chronic anchylosis
shows itself; the State develops more and more into the peripheric bone-
cuirass, so well known in zoology, the so-called dermatoskeleton; its
structure becomes always massier, it stretches over the "soft parts" until
at last in the nineteenth century it has grown to truly megalotheric
dimensions and sets apart from the true course of life and, if I may say
so, "ossifies" an extremely large percentage of the effective powers of
humanity as military and civil officials. This is not meant as criticism;
the boneless and invertebrate animals have never, as is well known,
played a great part in the world; it is besides far from my purpose to wish
to moralise in this book; I wish merely to explain why in the second part I
have not felt obliged to lay special stress upon the further development of
Church and State. The impulse to their development had already been
given in the thirteenth century, when nationalism

lxxxi AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

having prevailed over imperialism, the latter was scheming how to win
back what was lost; nothing essentially new was added later; even the
movements against the all too prevalent violation of individual freedom
by Church and State had already begun to make themselves felt very
forcibly and frequently. Church and State serve from now onwards, as I
have said, as the skeleton now and then suffering from fractures in
arms and legs but nevertheless a firm skeleton yet take comparatively
little share in the gradual rise of a new world; henceforth they follow
rather than lead. On the other hand, in all European countries in the
most widely different spheres of free human activity there arises from
about the year 1200 onwards a really recreative movement. The Church
schism and the revolt against State decrees are in reality rather the
mechanical side of this movement; they spring from the deeply felt need,
experienced by newly awakening powers, of making room for themselves;
the creative element, strictly speaking, has to be sought elsewhere. I have
already indicated where, when I sought to justify my choice of the year
16
1200 as turning-point: the advance in things technical and industrial,
the founding of commerce on a large scale on the thoroughly Teutonic
basis of stainless uprightness, the rise of busy towns, the discovery of

the earth (as we may daringly call it), the study of nature which begins
diffidently but soon extends its horizon over the whole cosmos, the
sounding of the deepest depths of human thought, from Roger Bacon to
Kant, the soaring of the spirit up to heaven, from Dante to Beethoven: it
is in all this that we may recognise the rise of a new world.

The Continuation

With this study of the gradual rise of a new world, approximately from
the year 1200 to the year 1800,

lxxxii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

these "Foundations" come to a close. The detailed plan of the "Nineteenth

Century" lies before me. In it I carefully avoid all artificial theorising and
all attempts to find an immediate connection between the two parts. It is
quite sufficient that the explanatory account of the first eighteen
centuries has been already given even though frequent and express
reference to it be not necessary, it will prove itself as the indispensable
introduction; the supplement will then be devoted to drawing parallels
and to the calculation of comparative values. Here I shall confine myself
to considering one by one the most important phenomena of the century;
the principal features of political, religious and social organisation, the
course of development of the technical arts, the progress of natural
science and the humanities, and, lastly, the history of the human mind
as a thinking and creative power; everywhere, of course, only the
principal currents will be emphasised and nothing but the highest
achievements mentioned.

The consideration of these points is led up to by an introductory

chapter on the "New Forces" which have asserted themselves in this
century and have given to it its characteristic physiognomy, but which
could not be treated adequately within the limits of one of the general
chapters. The press, for instance, is at the same time a political and a
social power of the very first rank; its stupendous development in the
17
nineteenth century it owes primarily to industry and art. I do not refer so
much to the production of newspapers by timesaving machinery, &c, as
to telegraphy, which supplies the papers with news, and to railways,
which spread printed matter everywhere. The press is the most powerful
ally of capitalism; on art, philosophy and science it cannot really exercise
a distinct determining influence, but even here it can hasten or delay,
and so exercise in a high degree a formative influence upon

lxxxiii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

the age. This is a power unknown to previous centuries. In the same way
technical developments, the invention and perfection of the railway and

the steamboat, as also of the electric telegraph, have exercised no small

influence upon all spheres of human activity and wrought a great change
in the face of our earth and in the conditions of life upon it: quite direct
is the influence on strategy and consequently upon politics, as well as on
trade and industry, while science and even art have also been indirectly
affected: the astronomers of all lands can with comparative ease betake
themselves to the North Cape or the Fiji Islands to observe a total eclipse
of the sun, and the German festival plays in Bayreuth have, towards the
end of the century, thanks to the railway and the steamboat, become a
living centre of dramatic art for the whole world. Among these forces I
likewise reckon the emancipation of the Jews. Like every power that has
newly dropped its fetters, like the press and quick transit, this sudden
inroad of the Jews upon the life of the European races, who mould the
history of the world, has certainly not brought good alone in its train; the
so-called Classical Renaissance was after all merely a new birth of ideas,
the Jewish Renaissance is the resurrection of a Lazarus long considered
dead, who introduces into the Teutonic world the customs and modes of
thought of the Oriental, and who at the same time seems to receive a new
lease of life thereby, like the vine-pest which, after leading in America the
humble life of an innocent little beetle, was introduced into Europe and
suddenly attained to a world-wide fame of serious import. We have,
however, reason to hope and believe that the Jews, like the Americans,
have brought us not only a new pest but also a new vine. Certain it is
that they have left a peculiar impress upon our time, and that the "new
world" which is arising will require a very great exercise of its strength

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lxxxiv AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

for the work of assimilating this fragment of the "old world." There are
still other "new forces" which will have to be discussed in their proper
place. The founding of modern chemistry, for example, is the starting-
point of a new natural science; and the perfecting of a new artistic
language by Beethoven is beyond doubt one of the most pregnant
achievements in the sphere of art since the days of Homer; it gave men a
new organ of speech, that is to say, a new power.

The supplement is intended, as I have said, to furnish a comparison

between the "Foundations" and the book which is to follow. This
comparison I shall carry out point by point in several chapters, using the
scheme of the first part; this method will, I think, be found to lead to
many suggestive discoveries and interesting distinctions. Besides, it
paves the way splendidly for the somewhat bold but indispensable glance
into the future, without which our conception would not acquire
complete plasticity; it is only in this way that we can hope to gain a
bird's-eye view of the nineteenth century and so be able to judge it with
perfect objectivity; this will be the end of my task.

Such then is the extremely simple and unartificial plan of the

continuation. It is a plan which, perhaps, I may not live to carry out, yet I
am obliged to mention it here, as it has to no small degree influenced the
form of the present book.

ANONYMOUS FORCES

In this general introduction I must also discuss briefly some specially

important points, so that later we may not be detained by out-of-place
theoretical discussions.

Almost all men are by nature "hero-worshippers"; and no valid

objection can be urged against this healthy instinct. Simplification is a
necessity of the human

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