Part III: The Roman World
Napoleon, in a conversation which he once had with Goethe on the nature of
Tragedy, expressed the opinion that its modern phase differed from the ancient,
through our no longer recognizing a Destiny to which men are absolutely subject,
and that Policy occupies the place of the ancient Fate [La politique est la
fatalité]. This therefore he thought must be used as the modern form of Destiny
in Tragedy – the irresistible power of circumstances to which individuality must
bend. Such a power is the Roman World, chosen for the very purpose of casting
the moral units into bonds, as also of collecting all Deities and all Spirits
into the Pantheon of Universal dominion, in order to make out of them an
abstract universality of power. The distinction between the Roman and the
Persian principle is exactly this – that the former stifles all vitality, while
the latter allowed of its existence in the fullest measure. Through its being
the aim of the State, that the social units in their moral life should be
sacrificed to it, the world is sunk in melancholy: its heart is broken, and it
is all over with the Natural side of Spirit, which has sunk into a feeling of
unhappiness. Yet only from this feeling could arise the supersensuous, the free
Spirit in Christianity.
In the Greek principle we have seen spiritual existence in its exhilaration –
its cheerfulness and enjoyment: Spirit had not yet drawn back into abstraction;
it was still involved with the Natural element – the idiosyncrasy of
individuals; – on which account the virtues of individuals themselves became
moral works of art. Abstract universal Personality had not yet appeared, for
Spirit must first develop itself to that form of abstract Universality which
exercised the severe discipline over humanity now under consideration. Here, in
Rome, then, we find that free universality, that abstract Freedom, which on the
one hand sets an abstract state, a political constitution and power, over
concrete individuality; on the other side creates a personality in opposition to
that universality – the inherent freedom of the abstract Ego, which must be
distinguished from individual idiosyncrasy. For Personality constitutes the
fundamental condition of legal Right: it appears chiefly in the category of
Property, but it is indifferent to the concrete characteristics of the living
Spirit with which individuality is concerned. These two elements, which
constitute Rome – political Universality on the one hand, and the abstract
freedom of the individual on the other – appear, in the first instance, in the
form of Subjectivity. This Subjectivity – this retreating into one’s self which
we observed as the corruption of the Greek Spirit – becomes here the ground on
which a new side of the World’s History arises. In considering the Roman World,
we have not to do with a concretely spiritual life, rich in itself; but the
world-historical element in it is the abstractum of Universality, and the object
which is pursued with soulless and heartless severity, is mere dominion, in
order to enforce that abstractum.
In Greece, Democracy was the fundamental condition of political life, as in
the East, Despotism; here we have Aristocracy of a rigid order, in a state of
opposition to the people. In Greece also the Democracy was rent asunder, but
only in the way of factions; in Rome it is principles that keep the entire
community in a divided state – they occupy a hostile position towards, and
struggle with each other: first the Aristocracy with the Kings, then the Plebs
with the Aristocracy, till Democracy gets the upper hand ; then first arise
factions in which originated that later aristocracy of commanding individuals
which subjugated the world. It is this dualism that, properly speaking, marks
Rome’s inmost being.
Erudition has regarded the Roman History from various points of view, and has
adopted very different and opposing opinions: this is especially the case with
the more ancient part of the history, which has been taken up by three different
classes of literati – Historians, Philologists, and Jurists. The Historians hold
to the grand features, and show respect for the history as such; so that we may
after all see our way best under their guidance, since they allow the validity
of the records in the case of leading events. It is otherwise with the
Philologists, by whom generally received traditions are less regarded, and who
devote more attention to small details which can be combined in various ways.
These combinations gain a footing first as historical hypotheses, but soon after
as established facts. To the same degree as the Philologists in their
department, have the Jurists in that of Roman law, instituted the minutest
examination and involved their inferences with hypothesis. The result is that
the most ancient part of Roman History has been declared to be nothing but
fable; so that this department of inquiry is brought entirely within the
province of learned criticism, which always finds the most to do where the least
is to be got for the labor. While on the one side the poetry and the myths of
the Greeks are said to contain profound historical truths, and are thus
transmuted into history, the Romans on the contrary have myths and poetical
views affiliated upon them; and epopees are affirmed to be at the basis of what
has been hitherto taken for prosaic and historical.
With these preliminary remarks we proceed to describe the Locality.
The Roman World has its centre in Italy; which is extremely similar to
Greece, and, like it, forms a peninsula, only not so deeply indented. Within
this country, the city of Rome itself formed the centre of the centre. Napoleon
in his Memoirs takes up the question, which city – if Italy were independent and
formed a totality – would be best adapted for its capital. Rome, Venice, and
Milan may put forward claims to the honor; but it is immediately evident that
none of these cities would supply a centre. Northern Italy constitutes a basin
of the river Po, and is quite distinct from the body of the peninsula; Venice is
connected only with Higher Italy, not with the south; Rome, on the other hand,
would, perhaps, be naturally a centre for Middle and Lower Italy, but only
artificially and violently for those lands which were subjected to it in Higher
Italy. The Roman State rests geographically, as well as historically, on the
clement of force. The locality of Italy, then, presents no natural unity – as
the valley of the Nile; the unity was similar to that which Macedonia by its
sovereignty gave to Greece; though Italy wanted that permeation by one spirit,
which Greece possessed through equality of culture; for it was inhabited by very
various races. Niebuhr has prefaced his Roman history by a profoundly erudite
treatise on the peoples of Italy; but from which no connection between them and
the Roman History is visible. In fact, Niebuhr’s History can only be regarded as
a criticism of Roman History, for it consists of a series of treatises which by
no means possess the unity of history.
We observed subjective inwardness as the general principle of the Roman
World. The course of Roman History, therefore, involves the expansion of
undeveloped subjectivity – inward conviction of existence – to the visibility of
the real world. The principle of subjective inwardness receives positive
application in the first place only from without – through the particular
volition of the sovereignty, the government, etc. The development consists in
the purification of inwardness to abstract personality, which gives itself
reality in the existence of private property; the mutually repellent social
units can then be held together only by despotic power. The general course of
the Roman World may be defined as this; the transition from the inner sanctum of
subjectivity to its direct opposite. The development is here not of the same
kind as that in Greece – the unfolding and expanding of its own substance on the
part of the principle; but it is the transition to its opposite, which latter
does not appear as an element of corruption, but is demanded and posited by the
principle itself. – As to the particular sections of the Roman History, the
common division is that into the Monarchy, the Republic, and the Empire – as if
in these forms different principles made their appearance; but the same
principle – that of the Roman Spirit – underlies their development. In our
division, we must rather keep in view the course of History generally. 1 he
annals of every Worldhistorical people were divided above into three periods,
and this statement must prove itself true in this case also. The first period
comprehends the rudiments of Rome, in which the elements which are essentially
opposed, still repose in calm unity; until the contrarieties have acquired
strength, and the unity of the State becomes a powerful one, through that
antithetical condition having been produced and maintained within it. In this
vigorous condition the State directs its forces outwards – i.e., in the second
period – and makes its debut on the theatre of general history; this is the
noblest Period of Rome – the Punic Wars and the contact with the antecedent
World-Historical people. A wider stage is opened, towards the East; the history
at the epoch of this contact has been treated by the noble Polybius. The Roman
Empire now acquired that world-conquering extension which paved the way for its
fall. Internal distraction supervened, while the antithesis was developing
itself to self-contradiction and utter incompatibility; it closes with
Despotism, which marks the third period. The Roman power appears here in its
pomp and splendor; but it is at the same time profoundly ruptured within itself,
and the Christian Religion, which begins with the imperial dominion, receives a
great extension. The third period comprises the contact of Rome with the North
and the German peoples, whose turn is now come to play their part in History.
Section I: Rome to the Time of the Second Punic War.
Chapter I. – The Elements of the Roman Spirit
Before we come to the Roman History, we have to consider the Elements of the
Roman Spirit in general, and mention and investigate the origin of Rome with a
reference to them. Rome arose outside recognised countries, viz., in an angle
where three different districts met – those of the Latins, Sabines and
Etruscans; it was not formed from some ancient stem, connected by natural
patriarchal bonds, whose origin might be traced up to remote times (as seems to
have been the case with the Persians, who, however, even then ruled a large
empire); but Rome was from the very beginning, of artificial and violent, not
spontaneous growth. It is related that the descendants of the Trojans, led by
Æneas to Italy, founded Rome; for the connection with Asia was a much cherished
tradition, and there are in Italy, France, and Germany itself (Xanten) many
towns which refer their origin, or their names, to the fugitive Trojans. Livy
speaks of the ancient tribes of Rome, the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres. Now
if we look upon these as distinct nations, and assert that they were really the
elements from which Rome was formed – a view which in recent times has very
often striven to obtain currency – we directly subvert the historical tradition.
All historians agree that at an early period, shepherds, under the leadership of
chieftains, roved about on the hills of Rome; that the first Roman community
constituted itself as a predatory state; and that it was with difficulty that
the scattered inhabitants of the vicinity were thus united. The details of these
circumstances are also given Those predatory shepherds received every
contribution to their community that chose to join them (Livy calls it a
colluvies). The rabble of all the three districts between which Rome lay, was
collected in the new city. The historians state that this point was very well
chosen on a hill close to the river, and particularly adapted to make it an
asylum for all delinquents. It is equally historical that in the newly formed
state there were no women, and that the neighboring states would enter into no
connubia with it: both circumstances characterize it as predatory union, with
which the other states wished to have no connection. They also refused the
invitation to their religious festivals; and only the Sabines – a simple
agricultural people, among whom, as Livy says, prevailed a tristis atque tetrica
superstitio – partly from superstition, partly from fear, presented themselves
at them. The seizure of the Sabine women is also a universally received
historical fact. This circumstance itself involves a very characteristic
feature, viz., that Religion is used as a means for furthering the purposes of
the infant State. Another method of extension was the conveying to Rome of the
inhabitants of neighboring and conquered towns. At a later date there was also a
voluntary migration of foreigners to Rome; as in the case of the so celebrated
family of the Claudii, bringing their whole clientela. The Corinthian Demaratus,
belonging to a family of consideration, had settled in Etruria; but as being an
exile and a foreigner, he was little respected there, and his son, Lucumo, could
no longer endure this degradation. He betook himself to Rome, says Livy, because
a new people and a repentin a atque ex virtute nobilitas were to be found there.
Lucumo attained, we are told, such a degree of respect, that he afterwards
became king.
It is this peculiarity in the founding of the State which must be regarded as
the essential basis of the idiosyncrasy of Rome. For it directly involves the
severest discipline, and self-sacrifice to the grand object of the union. A
State which had first to form itself, and which is based on force, must be held
together by force. It is not a moral, liberal connection, but a compulsory
condition of subordination, that results from such an origin. The Roman virtus
is valor; not, however, the merely personal, but that which is essentially
connected with a union of associates ; which union is regarded as the supreme
interest, and may be combined with lawless violence of all kinds. While the
Romans formed a union of this kind, they were not, indeed, like the
Lacedaemonians, engaged in an internal contest with a conquered and subjugated
people; but there arose a distinction and a struggle between Patricians and
Plebeians. This distinction was mythically adumbrated in the hostile brothers,
Romulus and Remus. Remus was buried on the Aventine mount; this is consecrated
to the evil genii, and to it are directed the Secessions of the Plebs. The
question comes, then, how this distinction originated? It has been already said,
that Rome was formed by robber-herdsmen, and the concourse of rabble of all
sorts. At a later date, the inhabitants of captured and destroyed towns were
also conveyed thither. The weaker, the poorer, the later additions of population
are naturally underrated by, and in a condition of dependence upon those who
originally founded the state, and those who were distinguished by valor, and
also by wealth. It is not necessary, therefore, to take refuge in a hypothesis
which has recently been a favorite one – that the Patricians formed a particular
race.
The dependence of the Plebeians on the Patricians is often represented as a
perfectly legal relation – indeed, even a sacred one; since the Patricians had
the sacra in their hands, while the plebs would have been godless, as it were,
without them. The Plebeians left to the Patricians their hypocritical stuff (ad
decipiendam plebem, Cic.) and cared nothing for their sacra and auguries; but in
disjoining political rights from these ritual observances, and making good their
claim to those rights, they were no more guilty of a presumptuous sacrilege than
the Protestants, when they emancipated the political power of the State, and
asserted the freedom of conscience. The light in which, as previously stated, we
must regard the relation of the Patricians and Plebeians is, that those who were
poor, and consequently helpless, were compelled to attach themselves to the
richer and more respectable, and to seek for their patrocinium: in this relation
of protection on the part of the more wealthy, the protected are called
clientes. But we find very soon a fresh distinction between the plebs and the
clientes. In the contentions between the Patricians and the Plebeians, the
clientes held to their patroni, though belonging to the plebs as decidedly as
any class. That this relation of the clientes had not the stamp of right and law
is evident from the fact, that with the introduction and knowledge of the laws
among all classes, the cliental relation gradually vanished; for as soon as
individuals found protection in the law, the temporary necessity for it could
not but cease.
In the first predatory period of the state, every citizen was necessarily a
soldier, for the state was based on war; this burden was oppressive, since every
citizen was obliged to maintain himself in the field. This circumstance,
therefore, gave rise to the contracting of enormous debts – the Patricians
becoming the creditors of the Plebeians. With the introduction of laws, this
arbitrary relation necessarily ceased; but only gradually, for the Patricians
were far from being immediately inclined to release the plebs from the cliental
relation; they rather strove to render it permanent. The laws of the Twelve
Tables still contained much that was undefined; very much was still left to the
arbitrary will of the judge – the Patricians alone being judges; the antithesis,
therefore, between Patricians and Plebeians, continues till a much later period.
Only by degrees do the Plebeians scale all the heights of official station, and
attain those privileges which formerly belonged to the Patricians alone.
In the life of the Greeks, although it did not any more than that of the
Romans originate in the patriarchal relation, Family love and the Family tie
appeared at its very commencement, and the peaceful aim of their social
existence had for its necessary condition the extirpation of freebooters both by
sea and land. The founders of Rome, on the contrary – Romulus and Remus – are,
according to the tradition, themselves freebooters – represented as from their
earliest days thrust out from the Family, and as having grown up in a state of
isolation from family affection. In like manner, the first Romans are said to
have got their wives, not by free courtship and reciprocated inclination, but by
force. This commencement of the Roman life in savage rudeness excluding the
sensibilities of natural morality, brings with it one characteristic element –
harshness in respect to the family relation; a selfish harshness, which
constituted the fundamental condition of Roman manners and laws, as we observe
them in the sequel. We thus find family relations among the Romans not as a
beautiful, free relation of love and feeling; the place of confidence is usurped
by the principle of severity, dependence, and subordination. Marriage, in its
strict and formal shape, bore quite the aspect of a mere contract; the wife was
part of the husband’s property (in manum conventio), and the marriage ceremony
was based on a cocmtio, in a form such as might have been adopted on the
occasion of any other purchase. The husband acquired a power over his wife, such
as he had over his daughter; nor less over her property; so that everything
which she gained, she gained for her husband. During the good times of the
republic, the celebration of marriages included a religious ceremony –
confarreatio – but which was omitted at a later period. The husband obtained not
less power than by the coemtio, when he married according to the form called
usiis, that is, when the wife remained in the house of her husband without
having been absent a trinoctium in a year. If the husband had not married in one
of the forms of the in manum conventio, the wife remained either in the power of
her father, or under the guardianship of her agnates, and was free as regarded
her husband. The Roman matron, therefore, obtained honor and dignity only
through independence of her husband, instead of acquiring her honor through her
husband and by marriage. If a husband who had married under the freer condition
– that is, when the union was not consecrated by the confarreatio – wished to
separate from his wife, he dismissed her without further ceremony. The relation
of sons was perfectly similar: they were, on the one hand, about as dependent on
the paternal power as the wife on the matrimonial; they could not possess
property – it made no difference whether they filled a high office in the State
or not (though the peculia castrensia, and adventitia were differently regarded)
; but on the other hand, when they were emancipated, they had no connection with
their father and their family. An evidence of the degree in which the position
of children was regarded as analogous to that of slaves, is presented in the
imaginaria servitus (mancipium), through which emancipated children had to pass.
In reference to inheritance, morality would seem to demand that children should
share equally. Among the Romans, on the contrary, testamentary caprice manifests
itself in its harshest form. Thus perverted and demoralized, do we here see the
fundamental relations of ethics. The immoral active severity of the Romans in
this private side of character, necessarily finds its counterpart in the passive
severity of their political union. For the severity which the Roman experienced
from the State he was compensated by a severity, identical in nature, which he
was allowed to indulge towards his family – a servant on the one side, a despot
on the other. This constitutes the Roman greatness, whose peculiar
characteristic was stern inflexibility in the union of individuals with the
State, and with its law and mandate. In order to obtain a nearer view of this
Spirit, we must not merely keep in view the actions of Roman heroes, confronting
the enemy as soldiers or generals, or appearing as ambassadors – since in these
cases they belong, with their whole mind and thought, only to the state and its
mandate, without hesitation or yielding – but pay particular attention also to
the conduct of the plebs in times of revolt against the patricians. How often in
insurrection and in anarchical disorder was the plebs brought back into a state
of tranquillity by a mere form, and cheated of the fulfilment of its demands,
righteous or unrighteous! How often was a Dictator, e.g., chosen by the senate,
when there was neither war nor danger from an enemy, in order to get the
plebeians into the army, and to bind them to strict obedience by the military
oath! It took Licinius ten years to carry laws favorable to the plebs; the
latter allowed itself to be kept back by the mere formality of the veto on the
part of other tribunes, and still more patiently did it wait for the
long-delayed execution of these laws. It may be asked: By what were such a
disposition and character produced? Produced it cannot be, but it is essentially
latent in the origination of the State from that primal robber-community, as
also in the idiosyncrasy of the people who composed it, and lastly, in that
phase of the World-Spirit which was just ready for development. The elements of
the Roman people were Etruscan, Latin and Sabine; these must have contained an
inborn natural adaptation to produce the Roman Spirit. Of the spirit, the
character, and the life of the ancient Italian peoples we know very little –
thanks to the non-intelligent character of Roman historiography! – and that
little, for the most part, from the Greek writers on Roman history. But of the
general character of the Romans we may say that, in contrast with that primeval
wild poetry and transmutation of the finite, which we observe in the East – in
contrast with the beautiful, harmonious poetry and well-balanced freedom of
Spirit among the Greeks – here, among the Romans the prose of life makes its
appearance – the self-consciousness of finiteness – the abstraction of the
Understanding and a rigorous principle of personality, which even in the Family
does not expand itself to natural morality, but remains the unfeeling
non-spiritual unit, and recognizes the uniting bond of the several social units
only in abstract universality.
This extreme prose of the Spirit we find in Etruscan art, which though
technically perfect and so far true to nature, has nothing of Greek Ideality and
Beauty: we also observe it in the development of Roman Law and in the Roman
religion. To the constrained, non-spiritual, and unfeeling intelligence of the
Roman world we owe the origin and the development of positive law. For we saw
above, how in the East, relations in their very nature belonging to the sphere
of outward or inward morality, were made legal mandates; even among the Greeks,
morality was at the same time juristic right, and on that very account the
constitution was entirely dependent on morals and disposition, and had not yet a
fixity of principle within it, to counterbalance the mutability of men’s inner
life and individual subjectivity. The Romans then completed this important
separation, and discovered a principle of right, which is external – i.e. one
not dependent on disposition and sentiment. While they have thus bestowed upon
us a valuable gift, in point of form, we can use and enjoy it without becoming
victims to that sterile Understanding – without regarding it as the ne plus
ultra of Wisdom and Reason. They were its victims, living beneath its sway; but
they thereby secured for others Freedom of Spirit – viz., that inward Freedom
which has consequently become emancipated from the sphere of the Limited and the
External. Spirit, Soul, Disposition, Religion have now no longer to fear being
involved with that abstract juristical Understanding. Art too has its external
side; when in Art the mechanical side has been brought to perfection, Free Art
can arise and display itself. But those must be pitied who knew of nothing but
that mechanical side, and desired nothing further; as also those who, when Art
has arisen, still regard the Mechanical as the highest. We see the Romans thus
bound up in that abstract understanding which pertains to finiteness. This is
their highest characteristic, consequently also their highest consciousness, in
Religion. In fact, constraint was the religion of the Romans; among the Greeks,
on the contrary, it was the cheerfulness of free fantasy. We are accustomed to
regard Greek and Roman religion as the same, and use the names Jupiter, Minerva,
etc. as Roman deities, often without distinguishing them from those of Greeks.
This is admissible inasmuch as the Greek divinities were more or less introduced
among the Romans; but as the Egyptian religion is by no means to be regarded as
identical with the Greek, merely because Herodotus and the Greeks form to
themselves an idea of the Egyptian divinities under the names “Latona,”
“Pallas,” etc., so neither must the Roman be confounded with the Greek. We have
said that in the Greek religion the thrill of awe suggested by Nature was fully
developed to something Spiritual – to a free conception, a spiritual form of
fancy – that the Greek Spirit did not remain in the condition of inward fear,
but proceeded to make the relation borne to man by Nature, a relation of freedom
and cheerfulness. The Romans, on the contrary, remained satisfied with a dull,
stupid subjectivity; consequently, the external was only an Object – something
alien, something hidden. The Roman spirit which thus remained involved in
subjectivity, came into a relation of constraint and dependence, to which the
origin of the word “re-ligio” (lig-are) points. The Roman had always to do with
something secret; in everything he believed in and sought for something
concealed; and while in the Greek religion everything is open and clear, present
to sense and contemplation – not pertaining to a future world, but something
friendly, and of this world – among the Romans everything exhibits itself as
mysterious, duplicate: they saw in the object first itself, and then that which
lies concealed in it: their history is pervaded by this duplicate mode of
viewing phenomena. The city of Rome had besides its proper name another secret
one, known only to a few. It is believed by some to have been “Valentia,” the
Latin translation of “Roma”; others think it was “Amor” (“Roma” read backwards).
Romulus, the founder of the State, had also another, a sacred name – “Quirinus”
– by which title he was worshipped: the Romans too were also called Quirites.
(This name is connected with the term “curia”: in tracing its etymology the name
of the Sabine town “Cures,” has been had recourse to.) Among the Romans the
religious thrill of awe remained undeveloped; it was shut up to the mere
subjective certainty of its own existence. Consciousness has therefore given
itself no spiritual objectivity – has not elevated itself to the theoretical
contemplation of the eternally divine nature, and to freedom in that
contemplation; it has gained no religious substantiality for itself from Spirit.
The bare subjectivity of conscience is characteristic of the Roman in all that
he does and undertakes – in his covenants, political relations, obligations,
family relations, etc.; and all these relations receive thereby not merely a
legal sanction, but as it were a solemnity analogous to that of an oath. The
infinite number of ceremonies at the comitia, on assuming offices, etc., are
expressions and declarations that concern this firm bond. Everywhere the sacra
play a very important part. Transactions, naturally the most alien to
constraint, became a sacrum, and were petrified, as it were, into that. To this
category belongs, e.g., in strict marriages, the confarreatio, and the auguries
and auspices generally. The knowledge of these sacra is utterly uninteresting
and wearisome, affording fresh material for learned research as to whether they
are of Etruscan, Sabine, or other origin. On their account the Roman people have
been regarded as extremely pious, both in positive and negative observances;
though it is ridiculous to hear recent writers speak with unction and respect of
these sacra. The Patricians were especially fond of them; they have therefore
been elevated in the judgment of some, to the dignity of sacerdotal families,
and regarded as the sacred gentes – the possessors and conservators of Roman
religion: the plebeians then become the godless element. On this head what is
pertinent has already been said. The ancient kings were at the same time also
reges sacrorum. After the royal dignity had been done away with, there still
remained a Rex Sacrorum; but he, like all the other priests, was subject to the
Pontifex Maximus, who presided over all the “sacra,” and gave them such a
rigidity and fixity as enabled the patricians to maintain their religious power
so long.
But the essential point in pious feeling is the subject matter with which it
occupies itself – though it is often asserted, on the contrary, in modern times,
that if pious feelings exist, it is a matter of indifference what object
occupies them. It has been already remarked of the Romans, that their religious
subjectivity did not expand into a free spiritual and moral comprehensiveness of
being. It can be said that their piety did not develop itself into religion; for
it remained essentially formal, and this formalism took its real side from
another quarter. From the very definition given, it follows that it can only be
of a finite, unhallowed order, since it arose outside the secret sanctum of
religion. The chief characteristic of Roman Religion is therefore a hard and dry
contemplation of certain voluntary aims, which they regard as existing
absolutely in their divinities, and whose accomplishment they desire of them as
embodying absolute power, These purposes constitute that for the sake of which
they worship the gods, and by which, in a constrained, limited way, they are
bound to their deities. The Roman religion is therefore the entirely prosaic one
of narrow aspirations, expediency, profit. The divinities peculiar to them are
entirely prosaic; they are conditions [of mind or body], sensations, or useful
arts, to which their dry fancy, having elevated them to independent power, gave
objectivity; they are partly abstractions, which could only become frigid
allegories – partly conditions of being which appear as bringing advantage or
injury, and which were presented as objects of worship in their original bare
and limited form. We can but briefly notice a few examples. The Romans
worshipped “Pax,” “Tranquillitas,” “Vacuna” (Repose), “Angeronia” (Sorrow and
Grief), as divinities; they consecrated altars to the Plague, to Hunger, to
Mildew (Robigo), to Fever, and to the Dea Cloacina. Juno appears among the
Romans not merely as “Lucina,” the obstetric goddess, but also as “Juno
Ossipagina,” the divinity who forms the bones of the child, and as “Juno Unxia,”
who anoints the hinges of the doors at marriages (a matter which was also
reckoned among the “sacra”). How little have these prosaic conceptions in common
with the beauty of the spiritual powers and deities of the Greeks! On the other
hand, Jupiter as “Jupiter Capitolinus” represents the generic essence of the
Roman Empire, which is also personified in the divinities “Roma” and “Fortuna
Publica.”
It was the Romans especially who introduced the practice of not merely
supplicating the gods in time of need, and celebrating “lectisternia,” but of
also making solemn promises and vows to them. For help in difficulty they sent
even into foreign countries, and imported foreign divinities and rites. The
introduction of the gods and most of the Roman temples thus arose from necessity
– from a vow of some kind, and an obligatory, not disinterested acknowledgment
of favors. The Greeks on the contrary erected and instituted their beautiful
temples, and statues, and rites, from love to beauty and divinity for their own
sake.
Only one side of the Roman religion exhibits something attractive, and that
is the festivals, which bear a relation to country life, and whose observance
was transmitted from the earliest times. The idea of the Saturnian time is
partly their basis – the conception of a state of things antecedent to and
beyond the limits of civil society and political combination; but their import
is partly taken from Nature generally – the Sun, the course of the year, the
seasons, months, etc., (with astronomical intimations) – partly from the
particular aspects of the course of Nature, as bearing upon pastoral and
agricultural life. There were festivals of sowing and harvesting and of the
seasons; the principal was that of the Saturnalia, etc. In this aspect there
appears much that is naive and ingenuous in the tradition. Yet this series of
rites, on the whole, presents a very limited and prosaic appearance; deeper
views of the great powers of nature and their generic processes are not
deducible from them; for they are entirely directed to external vulgar
advantage, and the merriment they occasioned, degenerated into a buffoonery
unrelieved by intellect. While among the Greeks their tragic art developed
itself from similar rudiments, it is on the other hand remarkable that among the
Romans the scurrilous dances and songs connected with the rural festivals were
kept up till the latest periods without any advance from this naive but rude
form to anything really artistic.
It has already been said that the Romans adopted the Greek Gods, (the
mythology of the Roman poets is entirely derived from the Greeks); but the
worship of these beautiful gods of the imagination appears to have been among
them of a very cold and superficial order. Their talk of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva
sounds like a mere theatrical mention of them. The Greeks made their Pantheon
the embodiment of a rich intellectual material, and adorned it with bright
fancies; it was to them an object calling forth continual invention and exciting
thoughtful reflection; and an extensive, nay inexhaustible, treasure has thus
been created for sentiment, feeling and thought in their mythology. The Spirit
of the Romans did not indulge and delight itself in that play of a thoughtful
fancy; the Greek mythology appears lifeless and exotic in their hands. Among the
Roman poets – especially Virgil – the introduction of the gods is the product of
a frigid Understanding and of imitation. The gods are used in these poems as
machinery, and in a merely superficial way; regarded much in the same way as in
our didactic treatises on the belleslettres, where among other directions we
find one relating to the use of such/machinery in epics – in order to produce
astonishment.
The Romans were as essentially different from the Greeks in respect to their
public games. In these the Romans were, properly speaking, only spectators. The
mimetic and theatrical representation, the dancing, foot-racing and wrestling,
they left to manumitted slaves, gladiators, or criminals condemned to death.
Nero’s deepest degradation was his appearing on a public stage as a singer,
lyrist and combatant. As the Romans were only spectators, these diversions were
something foreign to them; they did not enter into them with their whole souls.
With increasing luxury the taste for the baiting of beasts and men became
particularly keen. Hundreds of bears, lions, tigers, elephants, crocodiles, and
ostriches, were produced, and slaughtered for mere amusement. A body consisting
of hundreds, nay thousands of gladiators, when entering the amphitheatre at a
certain festival to engage in a sham sea-fight, addressed the Emperor with the
words: “Those who are devoted to death salute thee,” to excite some compassion.
In vain! the whole were devoted to mutual slaughter. In place of human
sufferings in the depths of the soul and spirit, occasioned by the
contradictions of life, and which find their solution in Destiny, the Romans
instituted a cruel reality of corporeal sufferings: blood in streams, the rattle
in the throat which signals death, and the expiring gasp were the scenes that
delighted them. – This cold negativity of naked murder exhibits at the same time
that murder of all spiritual objective aim which had taken place in the soul. I
need only mention, in addition, the auguries, auspices, and Sibylline books, to
remind you how fettered the Romans were by superstitions of all kinds, and how
they pursued exclusively their own aims in all the observances in question. The
entrails of beasts, flashes of lightning, the flight of birds, the Sibylline
dicta determined the administration and projects of the State. All this was in
the hands of the patricians, who consciously made use of it as a mere outward
[non-spiritual, secular] means of constraint to further their own ends and
oppress the people.
The distinct elements of Roman religion are, according to what has been said,
subjective religiosity and a ritualism having for its object purely superficial
external aims. Secular aims are left entirely free, instead of being limited by
religion – in fact they are rather justified by it. The Romans are invariably
pious, whatever may be the substantial character of their actions. But as the
sacred principle here is nothing but an empty form, it is exactly of such a kind
that it can be an instrument in the power of the devotee; it is taken possession
of by the individual, who seeks his private objects and interests; whereas the
truly Divine possesses on the contrary a concrete power in itself. But where
there is only a powerless form, the individual – the Will, possessing an
independent concreteness able to make that form its own, and render it
subservient to its views – stands above it. This happened in Rome on the part of
the patricians. The possession of sovereignty by the patricians is thereby made
firm, sacred, incommunicable, peculiar: the administration of government, and
political privileges, receive the character of hallowed private property. There
does not exist therefore a substantial national unity – not that beautiful and
moral necessity of united life in the Polis; but every “gens” is itself firm,
stern, having its own Penates and sacra; each has it own political character,
which it always preserves: strict, aristocratic severity distinguished the
Claudii; benevolence towards the people, the Valerii; nobleness of spirit, the
Cornelii. Separation and limitation were extended even to marriage, for the
connubia of patricians with plebeians were deemed profane. But in that very
subjectivity of religion we find also the principle of arbitrariness: and while
on the one hand we have arbitrary choice invoking religion to bolster up private
possession, we have on the other hand the revolt of arbitrary choice against
religion. For the same order of things can, on the one side, be regarded as
privileged by its religious form, and on the other side wear the aspect of being
merely a matter of choice – of arbitrary volition on the part of man. When the
time was come for it to be degraded to the rank of a mere form, it was
necessarily known and treated as a form – trodden under foot – represented as
formalism. – The inequality which enters into the domain of sacred things forms
the transition from religion to the bare reality of political life. The
consecrated inequality of will and of private property constitutes the
fundamental condition of the change. The Roman principle admits of aristocracy
alone as the constitution proper to it, but which directly manifests itself only
in an antithetical form – internal inequality. Only from necessity and the
pressure of adverse circumstances is this contradiction momentarily smoothed
over; for it involves a duplicate power, the sternness and malevolent isolation
of whose components can only be mastered and bound together by a still greater
sternness, into a unity maintained by force.
Chapter II. – The History of Rome to the Second Punic War
In the first period, several successive stages display their characteristic
varieties. The Roman State here exhibits its first phase of growth, under Kings;
then it receives a republican constitution, at whose head stand Consuls. The
struggle between patricians and plebeians begins; and after this has been set at
rest by the concession of the plebeian demands, there ensues a state of
contentment in the internal affairs of Rome, and it acquires strength to combat
victoriously with the nation that preceded it on the stage of general history.
As regards the accounts of the first Roman kings, every datum has met with flat
contradiction as the result of criticism; but it is going too far to deny them
all credibility. Seven kings in all, are mentioned by tradition; and even the
“Higher Criticism” is obliged to recognize the last links in the series as
perfectly historical. Romulus is called the founder of this union of
freebooters; he organized it into a military state. Although the traditions
respecting him appear fabulous, they only contain what is in accordance with the
Roman Spirit as above described. To the second king, Numa, is ascribed the
introduction of the religious ceremonies. This trait is very remarkable from its
implying that religion was introduced later than political union, while among
other peoples religious traditions make their appearance in the remotest periods
and before all civil institutions. The king was at the same time a priest (rex
is referred by etymologists to rexein – to sacrifice. As is the case with states
generally, the Political was at first united with the Sacerdotal, and a
theocratical state of things prevailed. The King stood here at the head of those
who enjoyed privileges in virtue of the sacra.
The separation of the distinguished and powerful citizens as senators and
patricians took place as early as the first kings. Romulus is said to have
appointed 100 patres, respecting which however the Higher Criticism is
sceptical. In religion, arbitrary ceremonies – the sacra – became fixed marks of
distinction, and peculiarities of the gentes and orders. The internal
organization of the State was gradually realized. Livy says that as Numa
established all divine matters, so Servius Tullius introduced the different
Classes, and the Census, according to which the share of each citizen in the
administration of public affairs was determined. The patricians were
discontented with this scheme, especially because Servius Tullius abolished a
part of the debts owed by the plebeians, and gave public lands to the poorer
citizens, which made them possessors of landed property. He divided the people
into six classes, of which the first together with the knights formed
ninety-eight centuries, the inferior classes proportionately fewer. Thus, as
they voted by centuries, the class first in rank had also the greatest weight in
the State. It appears that previously the patricians had the power exclusively
in their hands, but that after Servius’s division they had merely a
preponderance; which explains their discontent with his institutions. With
Servius the history becomes more distinct; and under him and his predecessor,
the elder Tarquinius, traces of prosperity are exhibited. Niebuhr is surprised
that according to Dionysius and Livy, the most ancient constitution was
democratic, inasmuch as the vote of every citizen had equal weight in the
assembly of the people. But Livy only says that Servius abolished the suffragium
viritim. Now in the comitia curiata – the cliental relation, which absorbed the
plebs, extending to all – the patricians alone had a vote, and populus denoted
at that time only the patricians. Dionysius therefore does not contradict
himself, when he says that the constitution according to the laws of Romulus was
strictly aristocratic. Almost all the Kings were foreigners – a circumstance
very characteristic of the origin of Rome. Numa, who succeeded the founder of
Rome, was according to the tradition, one of the Sabines – a people which under
the reign of Romulus, led by Tatius, is said to have settled on one of the Roman
hills. At a later date however the Sabine country appears as a region entirely
separated from the Roman State. Numa was followed by Tullus Hostilius, and the
very name of this king points to his foreign origin. Ancus Martius, the fourth
king, was the grandson of Numa. Tarquinius Priscus sprang from a Corinthian
family, as we had occasion to observe above. Servius Tullius was from
Corniculum, a conquered Latin town; Tarquinius Superbus was descended from the
elder Tarquinius. Under this last king Rome reached a high degree of prosperity:
even at so early a period as this, a commercial treaty is said to have been
concluded with the Carthaginians; and to be disposed to reject this as mythical
would imply forgetfulness of the connection which Rome had, even at that time,
with the Etrurians and other bordering peoples whose prosperity depended on
trade and maritime pursuits. The Romans were probably even then acquainted with
the art of writing, and already possessed that clearsighted comprehension which
was their remarkable characteristic, and which led to that perspicuous
historical composition for which they are famous. In the growth of the inner
life of the state, the power of the Patricians had been much reduced; and the
kings often courted the support of the people – as we see was frequently the
case in the mediaeval history of Europe – in order to steal a march upon the
Patricians. We have already observed this in Servius Tullius. The last king,
Tarquinius Superbus, consulted the senate but little in state affairs; he also
neglected to supply the place of its deceased members, and acted in every
respect as if he aimed at its utter dissolution. Then ensued a state of
political excitement which only needed an occasion to break out into open
revolt. An insult to the honor of a matron – the invasion of that sanctum
sanctorum – by the son of the king, supplied such an occasion. The kings were
banished in the year 244 of the City and 510 of the Christian Era (that is, if
the building of Rome is to be dated 753 B.C.) and the royal dignity abolished
forever. The Kings were expelled by the patricians, not by the plebeians ; if
therefore the patricians are to be regarded as possessed of “divine right” as
being a sacred race, it is worthy of note that we find them here contravening
such legitimation; for the King was their High Priest. We observe on this
occasion with what dignity the sanctity of marriage was invested in the eyes of
the Romans. The principle of subjectivity and piety (pudor) was with them the
religious and guarded element; and its violation becomes the occasion of the
expulsion of the Kings, and later on of the Decemvirs too. We find monogamy
therefore also looked upon by the Romans as an understood thing. It was not
introduced by an express law; we have nothing but an incidental testimony in the
Institutes, where it is said that marriages under certain conditions of
relationship are not allowable, because a man may not have two wives. It is not
until the reign of Diocletian that we find a law expressly determining that no
one belonging to the Roman empire may have two wives, “since according to a
pretorian edict also, infamy attaches to such a condition” (cum etiam in edicto
praetoris hujusmodi viri infamia notati sunt). Monogamy therefore is regarded as
naturally valid, and is based on the principle of subjectivity. – Lastly, we
must also observe that royalty was not abrogated here as in Greece by suicidal
destruction on the part of the royal races, but was exterminated in hate. The
King, himself the chief priest, had been guilty of the grossest profanation; the
principle of subjectivity revolted against the deed, and the patricians, thereby
elevated to a sense of independence, threw off the yoke of royalty. Possessed by
the same feeling, the plebs at a later date rose against the patricians, and the
Latins and the Allies against the Romans; until the equality of the social units
was restored through the whole Roman dominion (a multitude of slaves, too, being
emancipated) and they were held together by simple Despotism. Livy remarks that
Brutus hit upon the right epoch for the expulsion of the kings, for that if it
had taken place earlier, the state would have suffered dissolution. What would
have happened, he asks, if this homeless crowd had been liberated earlier, when
living together had not yet produced a mutual conciliation of dispositions? –
The constitution now became in name republican. If we look at the matter more
closely it is evident (Livy ii. 1) that no other essential change took place
than the transference of the power which was previously permanent in the King,
to two annual Consuls. These two, equal in power, managed military and judicial
as well as administrative business; for praetors, as supreme judges, do not
appear till a later date. At first all authority remained in the hands of the
consuls; and at the beginning of the republic, externally and internally, the
state was in evil plight. In the Roman history a period occurs as troubled as
that in the Greek which followed the extinction of the dynasties. The Romans had
first to sustain a severe conflict with their expelled King, who had sought and
found help from the Etrurians. In the war against Porsena the Romans lost all
their conquests, and even their independence : they were compelled to lay down
their arms and to give hostages; according to an expression of Tacitus (Hist. 3,
72) it seems as if Porsena had even taken Rome. Soon after the expulsion of the
Kings we have the contest between the patricians and plebeians; for the
abolition of royalty had taken place exclusively to the advantage of the
aristocracy, to which the royal power was transferred, while the plebs lost the
protection which the Kings had afforded it. All magisterial and juridical power,
and all property in land was at this time in the hands of the patricians; while
the people, continually dragged out to war, could not employ themselves in
peaceful occupations: handicrafts could not flourish, and the only acquisition
the plebeians could make was their share in the booty. The patricians had their
territory and soil cultivated by slaves, and assigned some of their land to
their clients, who on condition of paying taxes and contributions – as tenant
cultivators, therefore – had the usufruct of it. This relation, on account of
the form in which the dues were paid by the Clientes, was very similar to
vassalage: they were obliged to give contributions towards the marriage of the
daughters of the Patronus, to ransom him or his sons when in captivity, to
assist them in obtaining magisterial offices, and to make up the losses
sustained in suits at law. The administration of justice was likewise in the
hands of the patricians, and that without the limitations of definite and
written laws; a desideratum which at a later period the Decemvirs were created
to supply. All the power of government belonged moreover to the patricians, for
they were in possession of all offices – first of the consulship, afterwards of
the military tribuneship and censorship (instituted A.U.C. 311) – by which the
actual administration of government as likewise the oversight of it, was left to
them alone. Lastly, it was the patricians who constituted the Senate. The
question as to how that body was recruited appears very important. But in this
matter no systematic plan was followed. Romulus is said to have founded the
senate, consisting then of one hundred members; the succeeding kings increased
this number, and Tarquinius Priscus fixed it at three hundred. Junius Brutus
restored the senate, which had very much fallen away, de novo. In after times it
would appear that the censors and sometimes the dictators filled up the vacant
places in the senate. In the second Punic War, A.U.C. 538, a dictator was
chosen, who nominated one hundred and seventyseven new senators: he selected
those who had been invested with curule dignities, the plebeian Ædiles, Tribunes
of the People and Quaestors, citizens who had gained spolia opima or the corona
civica. Under Caesar the number of the senators was raised to eight hundred;
Augustus reduced it to six hundred. It has been regarded as great negligence on
the part of the Roman historians, that they give us so little information
respecting the composition and redintegration of the senate. But this point
which appears to us to be invested with infinite importance, was not of so much
moment to the Romans at large; they did not attach so much weight to formal
arrangements, for their principal concern was, how the government was conducted.
How in fact can we suppose the constitutional rights of the ancient Romans to
have been so well defined, and that at a time which is even regarded as
mythical, and its traditionary history as epical? The people were in some such
oppressed condition as, e.g. the Irish were a few years ago in the British
Isles, while they remained at the same time entirely excluded from the
government. Often they revolted and made a secession from the city. Sometimes
they also refused military service; yet it always remains a very striking fact
that the senate could so long resist superior numbers irritated by oppression
and practised in war; for the main struggle lasted for more than a hundred
years. In the fact that the people could so long be kept in check is manifested
its respect for legal order and the sacra. But of necessity the plebeians at
last secured their righteous demands, and their debts were often remitted. The
severity of the patricians their creditors, the debts due to whom they had to
discharge by slave-work, drove the plebs to revolts. At first it demanded and
received only what it had already enjoyed under the kings – landed property and
protection against the powerful. It received assignments of land, and Tribunes
of the People – functionaries that is to say, who had the power to put a veto on
every decree of the senate. When this office commenced, the number of tribunes
was limited to two: later there were ten of them; which however was rather
injurious to the plebs, since all that the senate had to do was to gain over one
of the tribunes, in order to thwart the purpose of all the rest by his single
opposition. The plebs obtained at the same time the provocatio ad populum: that
is, in every case of magisterial oppression, the condemned person might appeal
to the decision of the people – a privilege of infinite importance to the plebs,
and which especially irritated the patricians. At the repeated desire of the
people the Decemviri were nominated – the Tribunate of the People being
suspended – to supply the desideratum of a determinate legislation; they
perverted, as is well known, their unlimited power to tyranny; and were driven
from power on an occasion entailing similar disgrace to that which led to the
punishment of the Kings. The dependence of the clientela was in the meantime
weakened; after the decemviral epoch the clientes are less and less prominent
and are merged in the plebs, which adopts resolutions (plebiscita); the senate
by itself could only issue senatus consulta, and the tribunes, as well as the
senate, could now impede the comitia and elections. By degrees the plebeians
effected their admissibility to all dignities and offices; but at first a
plebeian consul, aedile, censor, etc., was not equal to the patrician one, on
account of the sacra which the latter kept in his hands; and a long time
intervened after this concession before a plebeian actually became a consul. It
was the tribunus plebis, Licinius, who established the whole cycle of these
political arrangements – in the second half of the fourth century, A.U.C. 387.
It was he also who chiefly commenced the agitation for the lex agraria,
respecting which so much has been written and debated among the learned of the
day. The agitators for this law excited during every period very great
commotions in Rome. The plebeians were practically excluded from almost all the
landed property, and the object of the Agrarian Laws was to provide lands for
them – partly in the neighborhood of Rome, partly in the conquered districts, to
which colonies were to be then led out. In the time of the Republic we
frequently see military leaders assigning lands to the people; but in every case
they were accused of striving after royalty, because it was the kings who had
exalted the plebs. The Agrarian Law required that no citizen should possess more
than five hundred jugera: the patricians were consequently obliged to surrender
a large part of their property. Niebuhr in particular has undertaken extensive
researches respecting the agrarian laws, and has conceived himself to have made
great and important discoveries: he says, viz. that an infringement of the
sacred right of property was never thought of, but that the state had only
assigned a portion of the public lands for the use of the plebs, having always
had the right of disposing of them as its own property. I only remark in passing
that Hegewisch had made this discovery before Niebuhr, and that Niebuhr derived
the particular data on which his assertion rests from Appian and Plutarch; that
is from Greek authors, respecting whom he himself allows that we should have
recourse to them only in an extreme case. How often does Livy, as well as Cicero
and others, speak of the Agrarian laws, while nothing definite can be inferred
from their statements! – This is another proof of the inaccuracy of the Roman
historians. The whole affair ends in nothing but a useless question of
jurisprudence. The land which the patricians had taken into possession or in
which colonies settled, was originally public land; but it also certainly
belonged to those in possession, and our information is not at all promoted by
the assertion that it always remained public land. This discovery of Niebuhr’s
turns upon a very immaterial distinction, existing perhaps in his ideas, but not
in reality. – The Licinian law was indeed carried, but soon transgressed and
utterly disregarded. Licinius Stolo himself, who had first “agitated” for the
law, was punished because he possessed a larger property in land than was
allowed, and the patricians opposed the execution of the law with the greatest
obstinacy. We must here call especial attention to the distinction which exists
between the Roman, the Greek, and our own circumstances. Our civil society rests
on other principles, and in it such measures are not necessary. Spartans and
Athenians, who had not arrived at such an abstract idea of the State as was so
tenaciously held by the Romans, did not trouble themselves with abstract rights,
but simply desired that the citizens should have the means of subsistence; and
they required of the state that it should take care that such should be the
case. This is the chief point in the first period of Roman History – that the
plebs attained the right of being eligible to the higher political offices, and
that by a share which they too managed to obtain in the land and soil, the means
of subsistence were assured to the citizens.
By this union of the patriciate and the plebs, Rome first attained true
internal consistency ; and only after this had been realized could the Roman
power develop itself externally. A period of satisfied absorption in the common
interest ensues, and the citizens are weary of internal struggles. When after
civil discords nations direct their energies outward, they appear in their
greatest strength; for the previous excitement continues, and no longer having
its object within, seeks for it without. This direction given to the Roman
energies was able for a moment to conceal the defect of that union; equilibrium
was restored, but without an essential centre of unity and support. The
contradiction that existed could not but break out again fearfully at a later
period; but previously to this time the greatness of Rome had to display itself
in war and the conquest of the world. The power, the wealth, the glory derived
from these wars, as also the difficulties to which they led, kept the Romans
together as regards the internal affairs of the state. Their courage and
discipline secured their victory. As compared with the Greek or Macedonian, the
Roman art of war has special peculiarities. The strength of the phalanx lay in
its mass and in its massive character. The Roman legions also present a close
array, but they had at the same time an articulated organization: they united
the two extremes of massiveness on the one hand, and of dispersion into light
troops on the other hand: they held firmly together, while at the same time they
were capable of ready expansion. Archers and slingers preceded the main body of
the Roman army when they attacked the enemy – afterwards leaving the decision to
the sword.
It would be a wearisome task to pursue the wars of the Romans in Italy;
partly because they are in themselves unimportant – even the often empty
rhetoric of the generals in Livy cannot very much increase the interest – partly
on account of the unintelligent character of the Roman annalists, in whose pages
we see the Romans carrying on war only with “enemies” without learning anything
further of their individuality – e.g., the Etruscans, the Samnites, the
Ligurians, with whom they carried on wars during many hundred years. – It is
singular in regard to these transactions that the Romans, who have the
justification conceded by World- History on their side, should also claim for
themselves the minor justification in respect to manifestoes and treaties on
occasion of minor infringements of them, and maintain it as it were after the
fashion of advocates. But in political complications of this kind, either party
may take offence at the conduct of the other, if it pleases, and deems it
expedient to be offended. – The Romans had long and severe contests to maintain
with the Samnites, the Etruscans, the Gauls, the Marsi, the Umbrians and the
Bruttii, before they could make themselves masters of the whole of Italy. Their
dominion was extended thence in a southerly direction; they gained a secure
footing in Sicily, where the Carthaginians had long carried on war; then they
extended their power towards the west: from Sardinia and Corsica they went to
Spain. They thus soon came into frequent contact with the Carthaginians, and
were obliged to form a naval power in opposition to them. This transition was
easier in ancient times than it would perhaps be now, when long practice and
superior knowledge are required for maritime service. The mode of warfare at sea
was not very different from that on land. We have thus reached the end of the
first epoch of Roman History, in which the Romans by their retail military
transactions had become capitalists in a strength proper to themselves, and with
which they were to appear on the theatre of the world. The Roman dominion was,
on the whole, not yet very greatly extended: only a few colonies had settled on
the other side of the Po, and on the south a considerable power confronted that
of Rome. It was the Second Punic War, therefore, that gave the impulse to its
terrible collision with the most powerful states of the time; through it the
Romans came into contact with Macedonia, Asia, Syria, and subsequently also with
Egypt. Italy and Rome remained the centre of their great far-stretching empire,
but this centre was, as already remarked, not the less an artificial, forced,
and compulsory one. This grand period of the contact of Rome with other states,
and of the manifold complications thence arising, has been depicted by the noble
Achaean, Polybius, whose fate it was to observe the fall of his country through
the disgraceful passions of the Greeks and the baseness and inexorable
persistency of the Romans.
Section II: Rome from the Second Punic War to the Emperors
The second period, according to our division, begins with the Second Punic War,
that epoch which decided and stamped a character upon Roman dominion. In the
first Punic War the Romans had shown that they had become a match for the mighty
Carthage, which possessed a great part of the coast of Africa and southern
Spain, and had gained a firm footing in Sicily and Sardinia. The second Punic
War laid the might of Carthage prostrate in the dust. The proper element of that
state was the sea; but it had no original territory, formed no nation, had no
national army; its hosts were composed of the troops of subjugated and allied
peoples. In spite of this, the great Hannibal with such a host, formed from the
most diverse nations, brought Rome near to destruction. Without any support he
maintained his position in Italy for sixteen years against Roman patience and
perseverance; during which time however the Scipios conquered Spain and entered
into alliances with the princes of Africa. Hannibal was at last compelled to
hasten to the assistance of his hard-pressed country; he lost the battle of
Zatna in the year 552 A.U.C. and after six and thirty years revisited his
paternal city, to which he was now obliged to offer pacific counsels. The second
Punic War thus eventually established the undisputed power of Rome over
Carthage; it occasioned the hostile collision of the Romans with the king of
Macedonia, who was conquered five years later. Now Antiochus, the king of Syria,
is involved in the melee. He opposed a huge power to the Romans, was beaten at
Thermopylae and Magnesia, and was compelled to surrender to the Romans Asia
Minor as far as the Taurus. After the conquest of Macedonia both that country
and Greece were declared free by the Romans – a declaration whose meaning we
have already investigated, in treating of the preceding Historical nation. It
was not till this time that the Third Punic War commenced, for Carthage had once
more raised its head and excited the jealousy of the Romans. After long
resistance it was taken and laid in ashes. Nor could the Achaean league now long
maintain itself in the face of Roman ambition: the Romans were eager for war,
destroyed Corinth in the same year as Carthage, and made Greece a province. The
fall of Carthage and the subjugation of Greece were the central points from
which the Romans gave its vast extent to their sovereignty.
Rome seemed now to have attained perfect security; no external power
confronted it: she was the mistress of the Mediterranean – that is of the media
terra of all civilization. In this period of victory, its morally great and
fortunate personages, especially the Scipios, attract our attention. They were
morally fortunate – although the greatest of the Scipios met with an end
outwardly unfortunate – because they devoted their energies to their country
during a period when it enjoyed a sound and unimpaired condition. But after the
feeling of patriotism – the dominant instinct of Rome – had been satisfied,
destruction immediately invades the state regarded en masse; the grandeur of
individual character becomes stronger in intensity, and more vigorous in the use
of means, on account of contrasting circumstances. We see the internal
contradiction of Rome now beginning to manifest itself in another form; and the
epoch which concludes the second period is also the second mediation of that
contradiction. We observed that contradiction previously in the struggle of the
patricians against the plebeians: now it assumes the form of private interest,
contravening patriotic sentiment; and respect for the state no longer holds
these opposites in the necessary equipoise. Rather, we observe now side by side
with wars for conquest, plunder and glory, the fearful spectacle of civil
discords in Rome, and intestine wars. There does not follow, as among the Greeks
after the Median wars, a period of brilliant splendor in culture, art and
science, in which Spirit enjoys inwardly and ideally that which it had
previously achieved in the world of action. If inward satisfaction was to follow
the period of that external Prosperity in war, the principle of Roman life must
be more concrete, But if there were such a concrete life to evolve as an object
of consciousness from the depths of their souls by imagination and thought, what
would it have been! Their chief spectacles were triumphs, the treasures gained
in war, and captives from all nations, unsparingly subjected to the yoke of
abstract sovereignty. The concrete element, which the Romans actually find
within themselves, is only this unspiritual unity, and any definite thought or
feeling of a non-abstract kind, can lie only in the idiosyncrasy of individuals.
The tension of virtue is now relaxed, because the danger is past. At the time of
the first Punic War, necessity united the hearts of all for the saving of Rome.
In the following wars too, with Macedonia, Syria, and the Gauls in Upper Italy,
the existence of the entire state was still concerned. But after the danger from
Carthage and Macedon was over, the subsequent wars were more and more the mere
consequences of victories, and nothing else was needed than to gather in their
fruits. The armies were used for particular expeditions, suggested by policy, or
for the advantages of individuals – for acquiring wealth, glory, sovereignty in
the abstract. The relation to other nations was purely that of force. The
national individuality of peoples did not, as early as the time of the Romans,
excite respect, as is the case in modern times. The various peoples were not yet
recognized as legitimated; the various states had not yet acknowledged each
other as real essential existences. Equal right to existence entails a union of
states, such as exists in modern Europe, or a condition like that of Greece, in
which the states had an equal right to existence under the protection of the
Delphic god. The Romans do not enter into such a relation to the other nations,
for their god is only the Jupiter Capitolinus; neither do they respect the sacra
of the other nations (any more than the plebeians those of the patricians) ; but
as conquerors in the strict sense of the term, they plunder the Palladia of the
nations. Rome kept standing armies in the conquered provinces, and proconsuls
and propraetors were sent into them as viceroys. The Equites collected the taxes
and tributes, which they farmed under the State. A net of such fiscal farmers
(publicani) was thus drawn over the whole Roman world. – Cato used to say, after
every deliberation of the senate: “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam:”
and Cato was a thorough Roman. The Roman principle thereby exhibits itself as
the cold abstraction of sovereignty and power, as the pure egotism of the will
in opposition to others, involving no moral element of determination, but
appearing in a concrete form only in the shape of individual interests. Increase
in the number of provinces issued in the aggrandizement of individuals within
Rome itself, and the corruption thence arising. From Asia, luxury and debauchery
were brought to Rome. Riches flowed in after the fashion of spoils in war, and
were not the fruit of industry and honest activity; in the same way as the
marine had arisen, not from the necessities of commerce, but with a warlike
object. The Roman state, drawing its resources from rapine, came to be rent in
sunder by quarrels about dividing the spoil. For the first occasion of the
breaking out of contention within it was the legacy of Attalus, King of
Pergamus, who had bequeathed his treasures to the Roman State. Tiberius Gracchus
came forward with the proposal to divide it among the Roman citizens; he
likewise renewed the Licinian Agrarian laws, which had been entirely set aside
during the predominance of individuals in the state. His chief object was to
procure property for the free citizens, and to people Italy with citizens
instead of slaves. This noble Roman, however, was vanquished by the grasping
nobles, for the Roman constitution was no longer in a condition to be saved by
the constitution itself. Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, prosecuted the
same noble aim as his brother, and shared the same fate. Ruin now broke in
unchecked, and as there existed no generally recognized and absolutely essential
object to which the country’s energy could be devoted, individualities and
physical force were in the ascendant. The enormous corruption of Rome displays
itself in the war with Jugurtha, who had gained the senate by bribery, and so
indulged himself in the most atrocious deeds of violence and crime. Rome was
pervaded by the excitement of the struggle against the Cimbri and Teutones, who
assumed a menacing position towards the State. With great exertions the latter
were utterly routed in Provence, near Aix; the others in Lombardy at the Adige
by Marius the conqueror of Jugurtha. Then the Italian allies, whose demand of
Roman citizenship had been refused, raised a revolt; and while the Romans had to
sustain a struggle against a vast power in Italy, they received the news that,
at the command of Mithridates, 80,000 Romans had been put to death in Asia
Minor. Mithridates was King of Pontus, governed Colchis and the lands of the
Black Sea, as far as the Tauric peninsula, and could summon to his standard in
his war with Rome the populations of the Caucasus, of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and
a part of Syria, through his son-in-law Tigranes. Sulla, who had already led the
Roman hosts in the Social War, conquered him. Athens, which had hitherto been
spared, was beleaguered and taken, but “for the sake of their fathers” – as
Sulla expressed himself – not destroyed. He then returned to Rome, reduced the
popular faction, headed by Marius and Cinna, became master of the city, and
commenced systematic massacres of Roman citizens of consideration. Forty
senators and six hundred knights were sacrificed to his ambition and lust of
power.
Mithridates was indeed defeated, but not overcome, and was able to begin the
war anew. At the same time, Sertorius, a banished Roman, arose in revolt in
Spain, carried on a contest there for eight years, and perished only through
treachery. The war against Mithridates was terminated by Pompey; the King of
Pontus killed himself when his resources were exhausted. The Servile War in
Italy is a contemporaneous event. A great number of gladiators and mountaineers
had formed a union under Spartacus, but were vanquished by Crassus. To this
confusion was added the universal prevalence of piracy, which Pompey rapidly
reduced by a large armament.
We thus see the most terrible and dangerous powers arising against Rome; yet
the military force of this state is victorious over all. Great individuals now
appear on the stage as during the times of the fall of Greece. The biographies
of Plutarch are here also of the deepest interest. It was from the disruption of
the state, which had no longer any consistency or firmness in itself, that these
colossal individualities arose, instinctively impelled to restore that political
unity which was no longer to be found in men’s dispositions. It was their
misfortune that they could not maintain a pure morality, for their course of
action contravened things as they are, and was a series of transgressions. Even
the noblest – the Gracchi – were not merely the victims of injustice and
violence from without, but were themselves involved in the corruption and wrong
that universally prevailed. But that which these individuals purpose and
accomplish has on its side the higher sanction of the World-Spirit, and must
eventually triumph. The idea of an organization for the vast empire being
altogether absent, the senate could not assert the authority of government. The
sovereignty was made dependent on the people – that people which was now a mere
mob, and was obliged to be supported by corn from the Roman provinces. We should
refer to Cicero to see how all affairs of state were decided in riotous fashion,
and with arms in hand, by the wealth and power of the grandees on the one side,
and by a troop of rabble on the other. The Roman citizens attached themselves to
individuals who flattered them, and who then became prominent in factions, in
order to make themselves masters of Rome. Thus we see in Pompey and Caesar the
two foci of Rome’s splendor coming into hostile opposition: on the one side,
Pompey with the Senate, and therefore apparently the defender of the Republic –
on the other, Caesar with his legions and a superiority of genius. This contest
between the two most powerful individualities could not be decided at Rome in
the Forum. Caesar made himself master in succession, of Italy, Spain, and
Greece, utterly routed his enemy at Pharsalia, forty-eight years before Christ,
made himself sure of Asia, and so returned victor to Rome. In this way the
world-wide sovereignty of Rome became the property of a single possessor. This
important change must not be regarded as a thing of chance; it was necessary –
postulated by the circumstances. The democratic constitution could no longer be
really maintained in Rome, but only kept up in appearance. Cicero, who had
procured himself great respect through his high oratorical talent, and whose
learning acquired him considerable influence, always attributes the corrupt
state of the republic to individuals and their passions. Plato, whom Cicero
professedly followed, had the full consciousness that the Athenian state, as it
presented itself to him, could not maintain its existence, and therefore
sketched the plan of a perfect constitution accordant with his views. Cicero, on
the contrary, does not consider it impossible to preserve the Roman Republic,
and only desiderates some temporary assistance for it in its adversity. The
nature of the State, and of the Roman State in particular, transcends his
comprehension. Cato, too, says of Caesar: “His virtues be execrated, for they
have ruined my country!” But it was not the mere accident of Caesar’s existence
that destroyed the Republic – it was Necessity. All the tendencies of the Roman
principle were to sovereignty and military force: it contained in it no
spiritual centre which it could make the object, occupation, and enjoyment of
its Spirit. The aim of patriotism – that of preserving the State – ceases when
the lust of personal dominion becomes the impelling passion. The citizens were
alienated from the state, for they found in it no objective satisfaction; and
the interests of individuals did not take the same direction as among the
Greeks, who could set against the incipient corruption of the practical world,
the noblest works of art in painting, sculpture and poetry, and especially a
highly cultivated philosophy. Their works of art were only what they had
collected from every part of Greece, and therefore not productions of their own;
their riches were not the fruit of industry, as was the case in Athens, but the
result of plunder. Elegance – Culture – was foreign to the Romans per se; they
sought to obtain it from the Greeks, and for this purpose a vast number of Greek
slaves were brought to Rome. Delos was the centre of this slave trade, and it is
said that sometimes on a single day, ten thousand slaves were purchased there.
To the Romans, Greek slaves were their poets, their authors, the superintendents
of their manufactories, the instructors of their children.
The Republic could not longer exist in Rome. We see, especially from Cicero’s
writings, how all public affairs were decided by the private authority of the
more eminent citizens – by their power, their wealth; and what tumultuary
proceedings marked all political transactions. In the republic, therefore, there
was no longer any security; that could be looked for only in a single will.
Caesar, who may be adduced as a paragon of Roman adaptation of means to ends –
who formed his resolves with the most unerring perspicuity, and executed them
with the greatest vigor and practical skill, without any superfluous excitement
of mind – Caesar, judged by the great scope of history, did the Right; since he
furnished a mediating element, and that kind of political bond which men’s
condition required. Caesar effected two objects: he calmed the internal strife,
and at the same time originated a new one outside the limits of the empire. For
the conquest of the world had reached hitherto only to the circle of the Alps,
but Caesar opened a new scene of achievement: he founded the theatre which was
on the point of becoming the centre of History. He then achieved universal
sovereignty by a struggle which was decided not in Rome itself, but by his
conquest of the whole Roman World.
His position was indeed hostile to the republic, but, properly speaking, only
to its shadow; for all that remained of that republic was entirely powerless.
Pompey, and all those who were on the side of the senate, exalted their dignitas
auctoritas – their individual rule – as the power of the republic; and the
mediocrity which needed protection took refuge under this title. Caesar put an
end to the empty formalism of this title, made himself master, and held together
the Roman world by force, in opposition to isolated factions. Spite of this we
see the noblest men of Rome supposing Caesar’s rule to be a merely adventitious
thing, and the entire position of affairs to be dependent on his individuality.
So thought Cicero, so Brutus and Cassius. They believed that if this one
individual were out of the way, the Republic would be ipso facto restored.
Possessed by this remarkable hallucination, Brutus, a man of highly noble
character, and Cassius, endowed with greater practical energy than Cicero,
assassinated the man whose virtues they appreciated. But it became immediately
manifest that only a single will could guide the Roman State, and now the Romans
were compelled to adopt that opinion; since in all periods of the world a
political revolution is sanctioned in men’s opinions, when it repeats itself.
Thus Napoleon was twice defeated, and the Bourbons twice expelled. By repetition
that which at first appeared merely a matter of chance and contingency becomes a
real and ratified existence.
Section III:
Chapter I. Rome Under the Emperors.
During this period the Romans come into contact with the people destined to
succeed them as a World-Historical nation; and we have to consider that period
in two essential aspects, the secular and the spiritual. In the secular aspect
two leading phases must be specially regarded: first, the position of the Ruler;
and secondly, the conversion of mere individuals into persons – the world of
legal relations.
The first thing to be remarked respecting the imperial rule is that the Roman
government was so abstracted from interest, that the great transition to that
rule hardly changed anything in the constitution. The popular assemblies alone
were unsuited to the new state of things, and disappeared. The emperor was
princeps senatus, Censor, Consul, Tribune: he united all their nominally
continuing offices in himself; and the military power – here the most
essentially important – was exclusively in his hands. The constitution was an
utterly unsubstantial form, from which all vitality, consequently all might and
power, had departed; and the only means of maintaining its existence were the
legions which the Emperor constantly kept in the vicinity of Rome. Public
business was indeed brought before the senate, and the Emperor appeared simply
as one of its members; but the senate was obliged to obey, and whoever ventured
to gainsay his will was punished with death, and his property confiscated. Those
therefore who had certain death in anticipation, killed themselves, that if they
could do nothing more, they might at least preserve their property to their
family. Tiberius was the most odious to the Romans on account of his power of
dissimulation: he knew very well how to make good use of the baseness of the
senate, in extirpating those among them whom he feared. The power of the Emperor
rested, as we have said, on the army, and the Pretorian bodyguard which
surrounded him. But the legions, and especially the Pretorians, soon became
conscious of their importance, and arrogated to themselves the disposal of the
imperial throne. At first they continued to show some respect for the family of
Caesar Augustus, but subsequently the legions chose their own generals; such,
viz., as had gained their good will and favor, partly by courage and
intelligence, partly also by bribes, and indulgence in the administration of
military discipline.
The Emperors conducted themselves in the enjoyment of their power with
perfect simplicity, and did not surround themselves with pomp and splendor in
Oriental fashion. We find in them traits of simplicity which astonish us. Thus,
e.g., Augustus writes a letter to Horace, in which he reproaches him for having
failed to address any poem to him, and asks him whether he thinks that that
would disgrace him with posterity. Sometimes the Senate made an attempt to
regain its consequence by nominating the Emperor: but their nominees were either
unable to maintain their ground, or could do so only by bribing the Pretorians.
The choice of the senators and the constitution of the senate was moreover left
entirely to the caprice of the Emperor. The political institutions were united
in the person a the Emperor; no moral bond any longer existed; the will of the
Emperor was supreme, and before him there was absolute equality. The freedmen
who surrounded the Emperor were often the mightiest in the empire; for caprice
recognizes no distinction. In the person of the Emperor isolated subjectivity
has gained a perfectly unlimited realization. Spirit has renounced its proper
nature, inasmuch as Limitation of being and of volition has been constituted an
unlimited absolute existence. This arbitrary choice, moreover, has only one
limit, the limit of all that is human – death; and even death became a
theatrical display. Nero, e.g., died a death, which may furnish an example for
the noblest hero, as for the most resigned of sufferers. Individual subjectivity
thus entirely emancipated from control, has no inward life, no prospective nor
retrospective emotions, no repentance, nor hope, nor fear – not even thought;
for all these involve fixed conditions and aims, while here every condition is
purely contingent. The springs of action are none other than desire, lust,
passion, fancy – in short, caprice absolutely unfettered. It finds so little
limitation in the will of others, that the relation of will to will may be
called that of absolute sovereignty to absolute slavery. In the whole known
world, no will is imagined that is not subject to the will of the Emperor. But
under the sovereignty of that One, everything is in a condition of order; for as
it actually is [as the Emperor has willed it], it is in due order, and
government consists in bringing all into harmony with the sovereign One. The
concrete element in the character of the Emperors is therefore of itself of no
interest, because the concrete is not of essential importance. Thus there were
Emperors of noble character and noble nature, and who highly distinguished
themselves by mental and moral culture. Titus, Trajan, the Antonines, are known
as such characters, rigorously strict in self-government; yet even these
produced no change in the state. The proposition was never made during their
time, to give the Roman Empire an organization of free social relationship: they
were only a kind of happy chance, which passes over without a trace, and leaves
the condition of things as it was. For these persons find themselves here in a
position in which they cannot be said to act, since no object confronts them in
opposition; they have only to will – well or ill – and it is so. The
praiseworthy emperors Vespasian and Titus were succeeded by that coarsest and
most loathsome tyrant, Domitian: yet the Roman historian tells us that the Roman
world enjoyed tranquillizing repose under him. Those single points of light,
therefore, effected no change; the whole empire was subject to the pressure of
taxation and plunder; Italy was depopulated; the most fertile lands remained
untilled: and this state of things lay as a fate on the Roman world.
The second point which we have particularly to remark, is the position taken
by individuals as persons. Individuals were perfectly equal (slavery made only a
trifling distinction), and without any political right. As early as the
termination of the Social War, the inhabitants of the whole of Italy were put on
an equal footing with Roman citizens; and under Caracalla all distinction
between the subjects of the entire Roman empire was abolished. Private Right
developed and perfected this equality. The right of property had been previously
limited by distinctions of various kinds, which were now abrogated. We observed
the Romans proceeding from the principle of abstract Subjectivity, which now
realizes itself as Personality in the recognition of Private Right. Private
Right, viz., is this, that the social unit as such enjoys consideration in the
state, in the reality which he gives to himself – viz., in property. The living
political body – that Roman feeling which animated it as its soul – is now
brought back to the isolation of a lifeless Private Right. As, when the physical
body suffers dissolution, each point gains a life of its own, but which is only
the miserable life of worms; so the political organism is here dissolved into
atoms – viz., private persons. Such a condition is Roman life at this epoch: on
the one side, Fate and the abstract universality of sovereignty; on the other,
the individual abstraction. “Person,” which involves the recognition of the
independent dignity of the social unit – not on the ground of the display of the
life which he possesses – in his complete individuality – but as the abstract
individuum. It is the pride of the social units to enjoy absolute importance as
private persons; for the Ego is thus enabled to assert unbounded claims; but the
substantial interest thus comprehended – the meum – is only of a superficial
kind, and the development of private right, which this high principle
introduced, involved the decay of political life. – The Emperor domineered only,
and could not be said to rule; for the equitable and moral medium between the
sovereign and the subjects was wanting – the bond of a constitution and
organization of the state, in which a gradation of circles of social life,
enjoying independent recognition, exists in communities and provinces, which,
devoting their energies to the general interest, exert an influence on the
general government. There are indeed Curiae in the towns, but they are either
destitute of weight, or used only as means for oppressing individuals, and for
systematic plunder. That, therefore, which was abidingly present to the minds of
men was not their country, or such a moral unity as that supplies: the whole
state of things urged them to yield themselves to fate, and to strive for a
perfect indifference to life – an indifference which they sought either in
freedom of thought or in directly sensuous enjoyment. Thus man was either at war
with existence, or entirely given up to mere sensuous existence. He either
recognized his destiny in the task of acquiring the means of enjoyment through
the favor of the Emperor, or through violence, testamentary frauds, and cunning;
or he sought repose in philosophy, which alone was still able to supply
something firm and independent: for the systems of that time – Stoicism,
Epicureanism, and Scepticism – although within their common sphere opposed to
each other, had the same general purport, viz., rendering the soul absolutely
indifferent to everything which the real world had to offer. These philosophies
were therefore widely extended among the cultivated: they produced in man a
selfreliant immobility as the result of Thought, i.e., of the activity which
produces the Universal. But the inward reconciliation by means of philosophy was
itself only an abstract one – in the pure principle of personality; for Thought,
which, as perfectly refined, made itself its own object, and thus harmonized
itself, was entirely destitute of a real object, and the immobility of
Scepticism made aimlessness itself the object of the Will. This philosophy knew
nothing but the negativity of all that assumed to be real, and was the counsel
of despair to a world which no longer possessed anything stable. It could not
satisfy the living Spirit, which longed after a higher reconciliation,
Chapter II. Christianity.
It has been remarked that Caesar inaugurated the Modern World on the side of
reality, while its spiritual and inward existence was unfolded under Augustus.
At the beginning of that empire, whose principle we have recognized as
finiteness and particular subjectivity exaggerated to infinitude, the salvation
of the World had its birth in the same principle of subjectivity – viz., as a
particular person, in abstract subjectivity, but in such a way that conversely,
finiteness is only the form of his appearance, while infinity and absolutely
independent existence constitute the essence and substantial being which it
embodies. The Roman World, as it has been described – in its desperate condition
and the pain of abandonment by God – came to an open rupture with reality, and
made prominent the general desire for a satisfaction such as can only be
attained in “the inner man,” the Soul – thus preparing the ground for a higher
Spiritual World. Rome was the Fate that crushed down the gods and all genial
life in its hard service, while it was the power that purified the human heart
from all speciality. Its entire condition is therefore analogous to a place of
birth, and its pain is like the travail-throes of another and higher Spirit,
which manifested itself in connection with the Christian Religion. This higher
Spirit involves the reconciliation and emancipation of Spirit; while man obtains
the consciousness of Spirit in its universality and infinity. The Absolute
Object, Truth, is Spirit; and as man himself is Spirit, he is present [is
mirrored] to himself in that object, and thus in his Absolute Object has found
Essential Being and his own essential being.[21] But in order that the
objectivity of Essential Being may be done away with, and Spirit be no longer
alien to itself – may be with itself [self- harmonized] – the Naturalness of
Spirit – that in virtue of which man is a special, empirical existence – must be
removed; so that the alien element may be destroyed, and the reconciliation of
Spirit be accomplished.
God is thus recognized as Spirit, only when known as the Triune. This new
principle is the axis on which the History of the World turns. This is the goal
and the starting point of History. “When the fulness of the time was come, God
sent his Son,” is the statement of the Bible. This means nothing else than that
self-consciousness had reached the phases of development [Momente], whose
resultant constitutes the Idea of Spirit, and had come to feel the necessity of
comprehending those phases absolutely. This must now be more fully explained. We
said of the Greeks, that the law for their Spirit was: “Man, know thyself.” The
Greek Spirit was a consciousness of Spirit, but under a limited form, having the
element of Nature as an essential ingredient. Spirit may have had the upper
hand, but the unity of the superior and the subordinate was itself still
Natural. Spirit appeared as specialized in the idiosyncrasies of the genius of
the several Greek nationalities and of their divinities, and was represented by
Art, in whose sphere the Sensuous is elevated only to the middle ground of
beautiful form and shape, but not to pure Thought. The element of Subjectivity
that was wanting to the Greeks, we found among the Romans: but as it was merely
formal and in itself indefinite, it took its material from passion and caprice;
– even the most shameful degradations could be here connected with a divine
dread (vide the declaration of Hispala respecting the Bacchanalia, Livy xxxix.
13). This element of subjectivity ‘s afterwards further realized as Personality
of Individuals – a realization which is exactly adequate to the principle, and
is equally abstract and formal. As such an Ego [such a personality], I am
infinite to myself, and my phenomenal existence consists in the property
recognized as mine, and the recognition of my personality. This inner existence
goes no further; all the applications of the principle merge in this.
Individuals are thereby posited as atoms; but they are at the same time subject
to the severe rule of the One, which as monas monadum is a power over private
persons [the connection between the ruler and the ruled is not mediated by the
claim of Divine or of Constitutional Right, or any general principle, but is
direct and individual, the Emperor being the immediate lord of each subject in
the Empire]. That Private Right is therefore, ipso facto, a nullity, an ignoring
of the personality; and the supposed condition of Right turns out to be an
absolute destitution of it. This contradiction is the misery of the Roman World.
Each person is, according to the principle of his personality, entitled only to
possesion, while the Person of Persons lays claim to the possession of all these
individuals, so that the right assumed by the social unit is at once abrogated
and robbed of validity. But the misery of this contradiction is the Discipline
of the World. “Zucht” (discipline) is derived from “Ziehen” (to draw).[22] This
“drawing” must be towards something; there must be some fixed unity in the
background in whose direction that drawing takes place, and for which the
subject of it is being trained, in order that the standard of attainment may be
reached. A renunciation, a disaccustoming, is the means of leading to an
absolute basis of existence. That contradiction which afflicts the Roman World
is the very state of things which constitutes such a discipline – the discipline
of that culture which compels personality to display its nothingness. But it is
reserved for us of a later period to regard this as a training; to those who are
thus trained [traines, dragged], it seems a blind destiny, to which they submit
in the stupor of suffering. The higher condition, in which the soul itself feels
pain and longing – in which man is not only “drawn,” but feels that the drawing
is into himself [into his own inmost nature] – is still absent. What has been
reflection on our part must arise in the mind of the subject of this discipline
in the form of a consciousness that in himself he is miserable and null. Outward
suffering must, as already said, be merged in a sorrow of the inner man. He must
feel himself as the negation of himself; he must see that his misery is the
misery of his nature – that he is in himself a divided and discordant being.
This state of mind, this self-chastening, this pain occasioned by our individual
nothingness – the wretchedness of our [isolated] self, and the longing to
transcend this condition of soul – must be looked for elsewhere than in the
properly Roman World. It is this which gives to the Jewish People their
World-Historical importance and weight; for from this state of mind arose that
higher phase in which Spirit came to absolute self-consciousness – passing from
that alien form of being which is its discord and pain, and mirroring itself in
its own essence. The state of feeling in question we find expressed most purely
and beautifully in the Psalms of David, and in the Prophets; the chief burden of
whose utterances is the thirst of the soul after God, its profound sorrow for
its transgressions, and the desire for righteousness and holiness. Of this
Spirit we have the mythical representation at the very beginning of the Jewish
canonical books, in the account of the Fall. Man, created in the image of God,
lost, it is said, his state of absolute contentment, by eating of the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Sin consists here only in Knowledge: this is the
sinful element, and by it man is stated to have trifled away his Natural
happiness. This is a deep truth, that evil lies in consciousness: for the brutes
are neither evil nor good; the merely Natural Man quite as little.[23]
Consciousness occasions the separation of the Ego, in its boundless freedom as
arbitrary choice, from the pure essence of the Will – i.e., from the Good.
Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of mere Nature, is the “Fall,” which
is no casual conception, but the eternal history of Spirit. For the state of
innocence, the paradisaical condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park,
where only brutes, not men, can remain. For the brute is one with God only
implicitly [not consciously]. Only Man’s Spirit (that is) has a self-cognizant
existence. This existence for self, this consciousness, is at the same time
separation from the Universal and Divine Spirit. If I hold to my abstract
Freedom, in contraposition to the Good, I adopt the standpoint of Evil. The Fall
is therefore the eternal Mythus of Man – in fact, the very transition by which
he becomes man. Persistence in this standpoint is, however, Evil, and the
feeling of pain at such a condition, and of longing to transcend it, we find in
David, when he says: “Lord, create for me a pure heart, a new steadfast Spirit.”
This feeling we observe even in the account of the Fall; though an announcement
of Reconciliation is not made there, but rather one of continuance in misery.
Yet we have in this narrative the prediction of reconciliation in the sentence,
“The serpent’s head shall be bruised”; but still more profoundly expressed where
it is stated that when God saw that Adam had eaten of that tree, he said,
“Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing Good and Evil.” God confirms the
words of the Serpent. Implicitly and explicitly, then, we have the truth, that
man through Spirit – through cognition of the Universal and the Particular –
comprehends God Himself. But it is only God that declares this – not man: the
latter remains, on the contrary, in a state of internal discord. The joy of
reconciliation is still distant from humanity; the absolute and final repose of
his whole being is not yet discovered to man. It exists, in the first instance,
only for God. As far as the present is concerned, the feeling of pain at his
condition is regarded as a final award. The satisfaction which man enjoys at
first, consists in the finite and temporal blessings conferred on the Chosen
Family and the possession of the Land of Canaan. His repose is not found in God.
Sacrifices are, it is true, offered to Him in the Temple, and atonement made by
outward offerings and inward penitence. But that mundane satisfaction in the
Chosen Family, and its possession of Canaan, was taken from the Jewish people in
the chastisement inflicted by the Roman Empire. The Syrian kings did indeed
oppress it, but it was left for the Romans to annul its individuality. The
Temple of Zion is destroyed; the God-serving nation is scattered to the winds.
Here every source of satisfaction is taken away, and the nation is driven back
to the standpoint of that primeval mythus – the standpoint of that painful
feeling which humanity experiences when thrown upon itself. Opposed to the
universal Fatum of the Roman World, we have here the consciousness of Evil and
the direction of the mind Godwards. All that remains to be done, is that this
fundamental idea should be expanded to an objective universal sense, and be
taken as the concrete existence of man – as the completion of his nature.
Formerly the Land of Canaan and themselves as the people of God had been
regarded by the Jews as that concrete and complete existence. But this basis of
satisfaction is now lost, and thence arises the sense of misery and failure of
hope in God, with whom that happy reality had been essentially connected. Here,
then, misery is not the stupid immersion in a blind Fate, but a boundless energy
of longing. Stoicism taught only that the Negative is not – that pain must not
be recognized as a veritable existence; but Jewish feeling persists in
acknowledging Reality and desires harmony and reconciliation within its sphere;
for that feeling is based on the Oriental Unity of Nature – i.e., the unity of
Reality, of Subjectivity, with the substance of the One Essential Being. Through
the loss of mere outward reality Spirit is driven back within itself; the side
of reality is thus refined to Universality, through the reference of it to the
One. The Oriental antithesis of Light and Darkness is transferred to Spirit, and
the Darkness becomes Sin. For the abnegation of reality there is no compensation
but Subjectivity itself – the Human Will as intrinsically universal; and thereby
alone does reconciliation become possible. Sin is the discerning of Good and
Evil as separation; but this discerning likewise heals the ancient hurt, and is
the fountain of infinite reconciliation. The discerning in question brings with
it the destruction of that which is external and alien in consciousness, and is
consequently the return of Subjectivity into itself. This, then, adopted into
the actual self-consciousness of the World is the Reconciliation [atonement] of
the World. From that unrest of infinite sorrow – in which the two sides of the
antithesis stand related to each other – is developed the unity of God with
Reality (which latter had been posited as negative i.e., with Subjectivity which
had been separated from Him. The infinite loss is counterbalanced only by its
infinity, and thereby becomes infinite gain. The recognition of the identity of
the Subject and God was introduced into the World when the fulness of Time was
come: the consciousness of this identity is the recognition of God in his true
essence. The material of Truth is Spirit itself – inherent vital movement. The
nature of God as pure Spirit, is manifested to man in the Christian Religion.
But what is Spirit? It is the one immutably homogeneous infinite – pure
Identity – which in its second phase separates itself from itself and makes this
second aspect Its own polar opposite, viz. as existence for and in self as
contrasted with the Universal. But this separation is annulled by the fact that
atomistic Subjectivity, as simple relation to itself [as occupied with self
alone] is itself the Universal, the Identical with self. If Spirit be defined as
absolute reflection within itself in virtue of its absolute duality – Love on
the one hand as comprehending the Emotional [Empfindung], Knowledge on the other
hand as Spirit [including the penetrative and active faculties, as opposed to
the receptive] – it is recognized as Triune: the “Father” and the “Son,” and
that duality which essentially characterizes it as “Spirit.” It must further be
observed, that in this truth, the relation of man to this truth is also posited.
For Spirit makes itself its own [polar] opposite – and is the return from this
opposite into itself. Comprehended in pure ideality, that antithetic form of
Spirit is the Son of God; reduced to limited and particular conceptions, it is
the World-Nature and Finite Spirit: Finite Spirit itself therefore is posited as
a constituent element [Moment] in the Divine Being. Man himself therefore is
comprehended in the Idea of God, and this comprehension may be thus expressed –
that the unity of Man with God is posited in the Christian Religion. But this
unity must not be superficially conceived, as if God were only Man, and Man,
without further condition, were God. Man, on the contrary, is God only in so far
as he annuls the merely Natural and Limited in his Spirit and elevates himself
to God. That is to say, it is obligatory on him who is a partaker of the truth,
and knows that he himself is a constituent [Moment] of the Divine Idea, to give
up his merely natural being: for the Natural is the Unspiritual. In this Idea of
God, then, is to be found also the Reconciliation that heals the pain and inward
suffering of man. For Suffering itself is henceforth recognized as an instrument
necessary for producing the unity of man with God. This implicit unity exists in
the first place only for the thinking speculative consciousness; but it must
also exist for the sensuous, representative consciousness – it must become an
object for the World – it must appear, and that in the sensuous form appropriate
to Spirit, which is the human. Christ has appeared – a Man who is God – God who
is Man; and thereby peace and reconciliation have accrued to the World. Our
thoughts naturally revert to the Greek anthropomorphism, of which we affirmed
that it did not go far enough. For that natural elation of soul which
characterized the Greeks did not rise to the Subjective Freedom of the Ego
itself – to the inwardness that belongs to the Christian Religion – to the
recognition of Spirit as a definite positive being. – The appearance of the
Christian God involves further its being unique in its kind; it can occur only
once, for God is realized as Subject, and as manifested Subjectivity is
exclusively One Individual. The Lamas are ever and anon chosen anew; because God
is known in the East as Substance, whose infinity of form is recognized merely
in an unlimited multeity of outward and particular manifestations. But
subjectivity as infinite relation to self, has its form in itself, and as
manifested, must be a unity excluding all others. – Moreover the sensuous
existence in which Spirit is embodied is only a transitional phase. Christ dies;
only as dead, is he exalted to Heaven and sits at the right hand of God; only
thus is he Spirit. He himself says: “When I am no longer with you, the Spirit
will guide you into all truth.” Not till the Feast of Pentecost were the
Apostles filled with the Holy Ghost. To the Apostles, Christ as living, was not
that which he was to them subsequently as the Spirit of the Church, in which he
became to them for the first time an object for their truly spiritual
consciousness. On the same principle, we do not adopt the right point of view in
thinking of Christ only as a historical bygone personality. So regarded, the
question is asked, What are we to make of his birth, his Father and Mother, his
early domestic relations, his miracles, etc.? – i.e., What is he unspiritually
regarded? Considered only in respect of his talents, character and morality – as
a Teacher and so forth – we place him in the same category with Socrates and
others, though his morality may be ranked higher. But excellence of character,
morality, etc. – all this is not the ne plus ultra in the requirements of Spirit
– does not enable man to gain the speculative idea of Spirit for his conceptive
faculty. If Christ is to be looked upon only as an excellent, even impeccable
individual, and nothing more, the conception of the Speculative Idea, of
Absolute Truth is ignored. But this is the desideratum, the point from which we
have to start. Make of Christ what you will, exegetically, critically,
historically – demonstrate as you please, how the doctrines of the Church were
and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For he that doeth the will of my
Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister and mother.” Yes, it is
even said: “Think not that I am come to send peace on the Earth. I am not come
to send peace but the sword. For I am come to set a man against his father, and
the daughter against her mother, and the mother-in-law against her
daughter-in-law.” Here then is an abstraction from all that belongs to reality,
even from moral ties. We may say that nowhere are to be found such revolutionary
utterances as in the Gospels; for everything that had been respected, is treated
as a matter of indifference – as worthy of no regard.
The next point is the development of this principle; and the whole sequel of
History is the history of its development. Its first realization is the
formation by the friends of Christ, of a Society – a Church. It has been already
remarked that only after the death of Christ could the Spirit come upon his
friends; that only then were they able to conceive the true idea of God, viz.,
that in Christ man is redeemed and reconciled: for in him the idea of eternal
truth is recognized, the essence of man acknowledged to be Spirit, and the fact
proclaimed that only by stripping himself of his finiteness and surrendering
himself to pure self-consciousness, does he attain the truth. Christ – man as
man – in whom the unity of God and man has appeared, has in his death, and his
history generally, himself presented the eternal history of Spirit – a history
which every man has to accomplish in himself, in order to exist as Spirit, or to
become a child of God, a citizen of his kingdom. The followers of Christ, who
combine on this principle and live in the spiritual life as their aim, form the
Church, which is the Kingdom of God. “Where two or three are gathered together
in my name” (i.e., “in the character of partakers in my being”) says Christ,
“there am I in the midst of them.” The Church is a real present life in the
Spirit of Christ.
It is important that the Christian religion be not limited to the teachings
of Christ himself: it is in the Apostles that the completed and developed truth
is first exhibited. This complex of thought unfolded itself in the Christian
community. That community, in its first experiences, found itself sustaining a
double relation – first, a relation to the Roman World, and secondly, to the
truth whose development was its aim. We will pursue these different relations
separately. The Christian community found itself in the Roman world, and in this
world the extension of the Christian religion was to take place. That community
must therefore keep itself removed from all activity in the State – constitute
itself a separate company, and not react against the decrees, views, and
transactions of the state. But as it was secluded from the state, and
consequently did not hold the Emperor for its absolute sovereign, it was the
object of persecution and hate. Then was manifested that infinite inward liberty
which it enjoyed, in the great steadfastness with which sufferings and sorrows
were patiently borne for the sake of the highest truth. It was less the miracles
of the Apostles that gave to Christianity its outward extension and inward
strength, than the substance, the truth of the doctrine itself. Christ himself
says: “Many will say to me at that day: Lord, Lord! have we not prophesied in
thy name, have we not cast out devils in thy name, have we not in thy name done
many wonderful deeds? Then will I profess unto them: I never knew you, depart
from me all ye workers of iniquity.”
As regards its other relation, viz., that to the Truth, it is especially
important to remark that the Dogma – the Theoretical – was already matured
within the Roman World, while we find the development of the State from that
principle, a much later growth. The Fathers of the Church and the Councils
constituted the dogma; but a chief element in this constitution was supplied by
the previous development of philosophy. Let us examine more closely how the
philosophy of the time stood related to religion. It has already been remarked
that the Roman inwardness and subjectivity, which presented itself only
abstractly, as soulless personality in the exclusive position assumed by the
Ego, was refined by the philosophy of Stoicism and Scepticism to the form of
Universality. The ground of Thought was thereby reached, and God was known in
Thought as the One Infinite. The Universal stands here only as an unimportant
predicate – not itself a Subject, but requiring a concrete particular
application to make it such. But the One and Universal, the Illimitable
conceived by fancy, is essentially Oriental; for measureless conceptions,
carrying all limited existence beyond its .proper bounds, are indigenous to the
East. Presented in the domain of Thought itself, the Oriental One is the
invisible and non-sensuous God of the Israelitish people, but whom they also
make an object of conception as a person. This principle became World-Historical
with Christianity. – In the Roman World, the union of the East and West had
taken place in the first instance by means of conquest: it took place now
inwardly, psychologically, also; – the Spirit of the East spreading over the
West. The worship of Isis and that of Mithra had been extended through the whole
Roman World; Spirit, lost in the outward and in limited aims, yearned after an
Infinite. But the West desired a deeper, purely inward Universality – an
Infinite possessed at the same time of positive qualities. Again, it was in
Egypt – in Alexandria, viz., the centre of communication between the East and
the West – that the problem of the age was proposed for Thought; and the
solution now found was – Spirit. There the two principles came into scientific
contact, and were scientifically worked out. It is especially remarkable to
observe there, learned Jews such as Philo, connecting abstract forms of the
concrete, which they derived from Plato and Aristotle, with their conception of
the Infinite, and recognizing God according to the more concrete idea of Spirit,
under the definition of the Logos. So, also, did the profound thinkers of
Alexandria comprehend the unity of the Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophy; and
their speculative thinking attained those abstract ideas which are likewise the
fundamental purport of the Christian religion. The application, by way of
postulate, to the pagan religion, of ideas recognized as true, was a direction
which philosophy had already taken among the heathen. Plato had altogether
repudiated the current mythology, and, with his followers, was accused of
Atheism. The Alexandrians, on the contrary, endeavored to demonstrate a
speculative truth in the Greek conceptions of the gods: and the Emperor Julian
the Apostate resumed the attempt, asserting that the pagan ceremonials had a
strict connection with rationality. The heathen felt, as it were, obliged to
give to their divinities the semblance of something higher than sensuous
conceptions; they therefore attempted to spiritualize them. Thus much is also
certain, that the Greek religion contains a degree of Reason; for the substance
of Spirit is Reason, and its product must be something Rational. It makes a
difference, however, whether Reason is explicitly developed in Religion, or
merely adumbrated by it, as constituting its hidden basis. And while the Greeks
thus spiritualized their sensuous divinities, the Christians also, on their
side, sought for a profounder sense in the historical part of their religion.
Just as Philo found a deeper import shadowed forth in the Mosaic record, and
idealized what he considered the bare shell of the narrative, so also did the
Christians treat their records – partly with a polemic view, but still more
largely from a free and spontaneous interest in the process. But the
instrumentality of philosophy in introducing these dogmas into the Christian
Religion, is no sufficient ground for asserting that they were foreign to
Christianity and had nothing to do with it. It is a matter of perfect
indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: “Is it true in and
for itself?” Many think that by pronouncing the doctrine to be Neo- Platonic,
they have ipso facto banished it from Christianity. Whether a Christian doctrine
stands exactly thus or thus in the Bible – the point to which the exegetical
scholars of modern times devote all their attention – is not the only question.
The Letter kills, the Spirit makes alive: this they say themselves, yet pervert
the sentiment by taking the Understanding for the Spirit. It was the Church that
recognized and established the doctrines in question – i.e. the Spirit of the
Church; and it is itself an Article of Doctrine: “I believe in a Holy
Church;"[24] as Christ himself also said: “The Spirit will guide you into all
truth.” In the Nicene Council (A.D. 325), was ultimately established a fixed
confession of faith, to which we still adhere: this confession had not, indeed,
a speculative form, but the profoundly speculative is most intimately inwoven
with the manifestation of Christ himself. Even in John (en arch hn o logos, ka o
logos hn pros ton qewn un o logos) we see the commencement of a profounder
comprehension. The profoundest thought is connected with the personality of
Christ – with the historical and external; and it is the very grandeur of the
Christian religion that, with all this profundity, it is easy of comprehension
by our consciousness in its outward aspect, while, at the same time, it summons
us to penetrate deeper. It is thus adapted to every grade of culture, and yet
satisfies the highest requirements.
Having spoken of the relation of the Christian community to the Roman world
on the one side, and to the truth contained in its doctrines on the other side,
we come to the third point – in which both doctrine and the external world are
concerned – the Church. The Christian community is the Kingdom of Christ – its
influencing present Spirit being Christ: for this kingdom has an actual
existence, not a merely future one. This spiritual actuality has, therefore,
also a phenomenal existence; and that, not only as contrasted with heathenism,
but with secular existence generally. For the Church, as presenting this outward
existence, is not merely a religion as opposed to another religion, but is at
the same time a particular form of secular existence, occupying a place side by
side with other secular existence. The religious existence of the Church is
governed by Christ; the secular side of its government is left to the free
choice of the members themselves. Into this kingdom of God an organization must
be introduced. In the first instance, all the members know themselves filled
with the Spirit; the whole community perceives the truth and gives expression to
it; yet, together with this common participation of spiritual influence, arises
the necessity of a presidency of guidance and teaching – a body distinct from
the community at large. Those are chosen as presidents who are distinguished for
talents, character, fervor of piety, a holy life, learning, and culture
generally. The presidents – those who have a superior acquaintance with that
substantial Life of which all are partakers, and who are instructors in that
Life – those who establish what is truth, and those who dispense its enjoyment –
are distinguished from the community at large, as persons endowed with knowledge
and governing power are from the governed. To the intelligent presiding body,
the Spirit comes in a fully revealed and explicit form; in the mass of the
community that Spirit is only implicit. While, therefore, in the presiding body,
the Spirit exists as self-appreciating and self-cognizant, it becomes an
authority in spiritual as well as in secular matters – an authority for the
truth and for the relation of each individual to the truth, determining how he
should conduct himself so as to act in accordance with the Truth. This
distinction occasions the rise of an Ecclesiastical Kingdom in the Kingdom of
God. Such a distinction is inevitable ; but the existence of an authoritative
government for the Spiritual, when closely examined, shows that human
subjectivity in its proper form has not yet developed itself. In the heart,
indeed, the evil will is surrendered, but the will, as human, is not yet
interpenetrated by the Deity; the human will is emancipated only abstractly –
not in its concrete reality – for the whole sequel of History is occupied with
the realization of this concrete Freedom. Up to this point, finite Freedom has
been only annulled, to make way for infinite Freedom. The latter has not yet
penetrated secular existence with its rays. Subjective Freedom has not yet
attained validity as such: Insight [speculative conviction] does not yet rest on
a basis of its own, but is content to inhere in the spirit of an extrinsic
authority. That Spiritual [geistig] kingdom has, therefore, assumed the shape of
an Ecclesiastical [geistlich] one, as the relation of the substantial being and
essence of Spirit to human Freedom. Besides the interior organization already
mentioned, we find the Christian community assuming also a definite external
position, and becoming the possessor of property of its own. As property
belonging to the spiritual world, it is presumed to enjoy special protection;
and the immediate inference from this is, that the Church has no dues to pay to
the state, and that ecclesiastical persons are not amenable to the jurisdiction
of the secular courts. This entails the government by the Church itself of
ecclesiastical property and ecclesiastical persons. Thus there originates with
the Church the contrasted spectacle of a body consisting only of private persons
and the power of the Emperor on the secular side; – on the other side, the
perfect democracy of the spiritual community, choosing its own president.
Priestly consecration, however, soon changes this democracy into aristocracy; –
though the further development of the Church does not belong to the period now
under consideration, but must be referred to the world of a later date. It was
then through the Christian Religion that the Absolute Idea of God, in its true
conception, attained consciousness. Here Man, too, finds himself comprehended in
his true nature, given in the specific conception of “the Son.” Man, finite when
regarded for himself, is yet at the same time the Image of God and a fountain of
infinity in himself. He is the object of his own existence – has in himself an
infinite value, an eternal destiny. Consequently he has his true home in a
super-sensuous world – an infinite subjectivity, gained only by a rupture with
mere Natural existence and volition, and by his labor to break their power
within him. This is religious self- consciousness. But in order to enter the
sphere and display the active vitality of that religious life, humanity must
become capable of it. This capability is the dunamis for that energeia. What
therefore remains to be considered is, those conditions of humanity which are
the necessary corollary to the consideration that Man is Absolute
Self-consciousness – his Spiritual nature being the starting-point and
presupposition. These conditions are themselves not yet of a concrete order, but
simply the first abstract principles, which are won by the instrumentality of
the Christian Religion for the secular State. First, under Christianity Slavery
is impossible; for man is man – in the abstract essence of his nature – is
contemplated in God; each unit of mankind is an object of the grace of God and
of the Divine purpose: “God will have all men to be saved.” Utterly excluding
all speciality, therefore, man, in and for himself – in his simple quality of
man – has infinite value; and this infinite value abolishes, ipso facto, all
particularity attaching to birth or country. The other, the second principle,
regards the subjectivity of man in its bearing on the Fortuitous – on Chance.
Humanity has this sphere of free Spirituality in and for itself, and everything
else must proceed from it. The place appropriated to the abode and presence of
the Divine Spirit – the sphere in question – is Spiritual Subjectivity, and is
constituted the place to which all contingency is amenable. It follows thence,
that what we observed among the Greeks as a form of Customary Morality, cannot
maintain its position in the Christian world. For that morality is spontaneous
unreflected Wont; while the Christian principle is independent subjectivity –
the soil on which grows the True. Now an unreflected morality cannot continue to
hold its ground against the principle of Subjective Freedom. Greek Freedom was
that of Hap and “Genius”; it was still conditioned by Slaves and Oracles; but
now the principle of absolute Freedom in God makes its appearance. Man now no
longer sustains the relation of Dependence, but of Love – in the consciousness
that he is a partaker in the Divine existence. In regard to particular aims
[such as the Greeks referred to oracular decision], man now forms his own
determinations and recognizes himself as plenipotentiary in regard to all finite
existence. All that is special retreats into the background before that
Spiritual sphere of subjectivity, which takes a secondary position only in
presence of the Divine Spirit. The superstition of oracles and auspices is
thereby entirely abrogated: Man is recognized as the absolute authority in
crises of decision.
It is the two principles just treated of, that now attach to Spirit in this
its self-contained phase. The inner shrine of man is designed, on the one hand,
to train the citizen of the religious life to bring himself into harmony with
the Spirit of God; on the other hand, this is the point du départ for
determining secular relations, and its condition is the theme of Christian
History. The change which piety effects must not remain concealed in the
recesses of the heart, but must become an actual, present world, complying with
the conditions prescribed by that Absolute Spirit. Piety of heart does not, per
se, involve the submission of the subjective will, in its external relations, to
that piety. On the contrary we see all passions increasingly rampant in the
sphere of reality, because that sphere is looked down upon with contempt, from
the lofty position attained by the world of mind, as one destitute of all claim
and value. The problem to be solved is therefore the imbuing of the sphere of
[ordinary] unreflected Spiritual existence, with the Idea of Spirit. A general
observation here suggests itself. From time immemorial it has been customary to
assume an opposition between Reason and Religion, as also between Religion and
the World; but on investigation this turns out to be only a distinction. Reason
in general is the Positive Existence [Wesen] of Spirit, divine as well as human.
The distinction between Religion and the World is only this – that Religion as
such, is Reason in the soul and heart – that it is a temple in which Truth and
Freedom in God are presented to the conceptive faculty: the State, on the other
hand, regulated by the selfsame Reason, is a temple of Human Freedom concerned
with the perception and volition of a reality, whose purport may itself be
called divine. Thus Freedom in the State is preserved and established by
Religion, since moral rectitude in the State is only the carrying out of that
which constitutes the fundamental principle of Religion. The process displayed
in History is only the manifestation of Religion as Human Reason – the
production of the religious principle which dwells in the heart of man, under
the form of Secular Freedom. Thus the discord between the inner life of the
heart and the actual world is removed. To realize this is, however, the vocation
of another people – or other peoples – viz., the German. In ancient Rome itself,
Christianity cannot find a ground on which it may become actual, and develop an
empire.
Chapter III. The Byzantine Empire.
With Constantine the Great the Christian religion ascended the throne of the
empire. He was followed by a succession of Christian Emperors, interrupted only
by Julian – who however, could do but little for the prostrate ancient faith.
The Roman Empire embraced the whole civilized earth, from the Western Ocean to
the Tigris – from the interior of Africa, to the Danube (Pannonia, Dacia).
Christianity soon spread through the length and breadth of this enormous realm.
Rome had long ceased to be the exclusive residence of the Emperors. Many of
Constantine’s predecessors had resided in Milan or other places; and he himself
established a second court in the ancient Byzantium, which received the name of
Constantinople. From the first its population consisted chiefly of Christians,
and Constantine lavished every appliance to render this new abode equal in
splendor to the old. The empire still remained in its integrity till Theodosius
the Great made permanent a separation that had been only occasional, and divided
it between his two sons. The reign of Theodosius displayed the last faint
glimmer of that splendor which had glorified the Roman world. Under him the
pagan temples were shut, the sacrifices and ceremonies abolished, and paganism
itself forbidden: gradually however it entirely vanished of itself. The heathen
orators of the time cannot sufficiently express their wonder and astonishment at
the monstrous contrast between the days of their forefathers and their own. “Our
Temples have become Tombs. The places which were formerly adorned with the holy
statues of the Gods are now covered with sacred bones (relics of the Martyrs);
men who have suffered a shameful death for their crimes, whose bodies are
covered with stripes, and whose heads have been embalmed, are the object of
veneration.” All that was contemned is exalted; all that was formerly revered,
is trodden in the dust. The last of the pagans express this enormous contrast
with profound lamentation. The Roman Empire was divided between the two sons of
Theodosius. The elder, Arcadius, received the Eastern Empire: – Ancient Greece,
with Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt; the younger, Honorius, the Western: –
Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain. Immediately after the death of Theodosius,
confusion entered, and the Roman provinces were overwhelmed by alien peoples.
Already, under the Emperor Valens, the Visigoths, pressed by the Huns, had
solicited a domicile on the hither side of the Danube. This was granted them, on
the condition that they should defend the border provinces of the empire. But
maltreatment roused them to revolt. Valens was beaten and fell on the field. The
later emperors paid court to the leader of these Goths. Alaric, the bold Gothic
Chief, turned his arms against Italy. Stilicho, the general and minister of
Honorius, stayed his course, A.D. 403, by the battle of Pollentia, as at a later
date he also routed Radagaisus, leader of the Alans, Suevi, and others. Alaric
now attacked Gaul and Spain, and on the fall of Stilicho returned to Italy. Rome
was stormed and plundered by him A.D. 410. Afterwards Attila advanced on it with
the terrible might of the Huns – one of those purely Oriental phenomena, which,
like a mere storm-torrent, rise to a furious height and bear down everything in
their course, but in a brief space are so completely spent, that nothing is seen
of them but the traces they have left in the ruins which they have occasioned.
Attila pressed into Gaul, where, A.D. 451, a vigorous resistance was offered him
by Ætius, near Chalons on the Marne. Victory remained doubtful. Attila
subsequently marched upon Italy and died in the year 453. Soon afterwards
however Rome was taken and plundered by the Vandals under Genseric. Finally, the
dignity of the Western Emperors became a farce, and their empty title was
abolished by Odoacer, King of the Heruli.
The Eastern Empire long survived, and in the West a new Christian population
was formed from the invading barbarian hordes. Christianity had at first kept
aloof from the state, and the development which it experienced related to
doctrine, internal organization, discipline, etc. But now it had become
dominant: it was now a political power, a political motive. We now see
Christianity under two forms: on the one side barbarian nations whose culture
was yet to begin, who have to acquire the very rudiments of science, law, and
polity; on other side civilized peoples in possession of Greek science and a
highly refined Oriental culture. Municipal legislation among them was complete –
having reached the highest perfection through the labors of the great Roman
jurisconsults; so that the corpus juris compiled at the instance of the Emperor
Justinian, still excites the admiration of the world. Here the Christian
religion is placed in the midst of a developed civilization, which did not
proceed from it. There, on the contrary, the process of culture has its very
first step still to take, and that within the sphere of Christianity. These two
empires, therefore, present a most remarkable contrast, in which we have before
our eyes a grand example of the necessity of a people’s having its culture
developed in the spirit of the Christian religion. The history of the highly
civilized Eastern Empire – where as we might suppose, the Spirit of Christianity
could be taken up in its truth and purity – exhibits to us a millennial series
of uninterrupted crimes, weaknesses, basenesses and want of principle; a most
repulsive and consequently a most uninteresting picture. It is evident here, how
Christianity may be abstract, and how as such it is powerless, on account of its
very purity and intrinsic spirituality. It may even be entirely separated from
the World, as e.g. in Monasticism – which originated in Egypt. It is a common
notion and saying, in reference to the power of Religion, abstractly considered,
over the hearts of men, that if Christian love were universal, private and
political life would both be perfect, and the state of mankind would be
thoroughly righteous and moral. Such representations may be a pious wish, but do
not possess truth; for religion is something internal, having to do with
conscience alone. To it all the passions and desires are opposed, and in order
that heart, will, intelligence may become true, they must be thoroughly
educated; Right must become Custom – Habit; practical activity must be elevated
to rational action; the State must have a rational organ-ization, and then at
length does the will of individuals become a truly righteous one. Light shining
in darkness may perhaps give color, but not a picture animated by Spirit. The
Byzantine Empire is a grand example of how the Christian religion may maintain
an abstract character among a cultivated people, if the whole organization of
the State and of the Laws is not reconstructed in harmony with its principle. At
Byzantium Christianity had fallen into the hands of the dregs of the population
– the lawless mob. Popular license on the one side and courtly baseness on the
other side, take refuge under the sanction of religion, and degrade the latter
to a disgusting object. In regard to religion, two interests obtained
prominence: first, the settlement of doctrine; and secondly, the appointment to
ecclesiastical offices. The settlement of doctrine pertained to the Councils and
Church authorities; but the principle of Christianity is Freedom – subjective
insight. These matters therefore, were special subjects of contention for the
populace; violent civil wars arose, and everywhere might be witnessed scenes of
murder, conflagration and pillage, perpetrated in the cause of Christian dogmas.
A famous schism e.g. occurred in reference to the dogma of the Trisagion. The
words read: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God of Zebaoth.” To this, one party,
in honor of Christ, added – “who was crucified for us.” Another party rejected
the addition, and sanguinary struggles ensued. In the contest on the question
whether Christ were omoousios or omoiousios – that is of the same or of similar
nature with God – the one letter i cost many thousands their lives. Especially
notorious are the contentions about Images, in which it often happened, that the
Emperor declared for the images and the Patriarch against, or conversely.
Streams of blood flowed as the result. Gregory Nazianzen says somewhere: “This
city (Constantinople) is full of handicraftsmen and slaves, who are all profound
theologians, and preach in their workshops and in the streets. If you want a man
to change a piece of silver, he instructs you in what consists the distinction
between the Father and the Son: if you ask the price of a loaf of bread, you
receive for answer – that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you ask,
whether the bread is ready, the rejoinder is that the genesis of the Son was
from Nothing.” The Idea of Spirit contained in this doctrine was thus treated in
an utterly unspiritual manner. The appointment to the Patriarchate at
Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, and the jealousy and ambition of the
Patriarchs likewise occasioned many intestine struggles. To all these religious
contentions was added the interest in the gladiators and their combats, and in
the parties of the blue and green color, which likewise occasioned the bloodiest
encounters; a sign of the most fearful degradation, as proving that all feeling
for what is serious and elevated is lost, and that the delirium of religious
passion is quite consistent with an appetite for gross and barbarous spectacles.
The chief points in the Christian religion were at last, by degrees,
established by the Councils. The Christians of the Byzantine Empire remained
sunk in the dream of superstition – persisting in blind obedience to the
Patriarchs and the priesthood. Image-Worship, to which we alluded above,
occasioned the most violent struggles and storms. The brave Emperor Leo the
Isaurian in particular, persecuted images with the greatest obstinacy, and in
the year 754, Image-Worship was declared by a Council to be an invention of the
devil. Nevertheless, in the year 787 the Empress Irene had it restored under the
authority of a Nicene Council, and the Empress Theodora definitively established
it – proceeding against its enemies with energetic rigor. The iconoclastic
Patriarch received two hundred blows, the bishops trembled, the monks exulted,
and the memory of this orthodox proceeding was celebrated by an annual
ecclesiastical festival. The West, on the contrary, repudiated Image-Worship as
late as the year 794, in the Council held at Frankfort; and, though retaining
the images, blamed most severely the superstition of the Greeks. Not till the
later Middle Ages did Image-Worship meet with universal adoption as the result
of quiet and slow advances.
The Byzantine Empire was thus distracted by passions of all kinds within, and
pressed by the barbarians – to whom the Emperors could offer but feeble
resistance – without. The realm was in a condition of perpetual insecurity. Its
general aspect presents a disgusting picture of imbecility; wretched, nay,
insane passions, stifle the growth of all that is noble in thoughts, deeds, and
persons. Rebellion on the part of generals, depositions of the Emperors by their
means or through the intrigues of the courtiers, assassination or poisoning of
the Emperors by their own wives and sons, women surrendering themselves to lusts
and abominations of all kinds – such are the scenes which History here brings
before us; till at last – about the middle of the fifteenth century (A.D. 1453)
– the rotten edifice of the Eastern Empire crumbled in pieces before the might
of the vigorous Turks.
