The structure of History

                   The Structure of History


ONE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS  of the linear scheme was the idea of the  singularity of civilization.  The concept “civilization” was used as though all highly symbolic Life, wherever and whenever it appeared, was really a manifestation of the same thing This “civilization” was something that previous ages had allowed to slip away, but somehow it was always found again, hidden in a book somewhere, and “passed on” to the Future. Again this was Rationalism: it assumed that men made their own history, and whatever happened was traceable to human excellence or to human mistakes. But, to the pinnacle of historical insight and self-conscious grand historical creativeness of deeds that is the 20th century, History is the record of the lives of eight High Cultures, each an  organism, impressed with the principle of individuality, each thus a member of a Life-form.  The type  High Culture  is a Life form at the peak of the organic hierarchy of which plants, animals, and man are the lower members.  Each of the Cultures that we have seen is a member of this higher genus, an individual.  Belonging as they do to one genus, they have common characteristics in their general habitue, their life-necessities, their technic of self-expression, their relation to landscape and population-streams, and their life span. The differences among the Cultures are in their souls, their individualities, and thus, despite their similar structure, their  creations  are in the highest degree dissimilar.  In the organic hierarchy, the principle of individuality is manifested at an increasing level of concentration from plants, through animals, to man. Cultures are even more highly individual than men, and their creations are correspondingly less capable of any inward assimilation by other Cultures. With the passing of the Age of Materialism, the soul knows once more that the development of an organism is the unfolding of a soul.  The matter is the mere envelope, the vehicle of the expression of the spirit.  It is this ancient and universal wisdom that is the primary source of the liberation of our History outlook from the darkness and oppressiveness of Mechanism.  The events of a human life are the expressions of the soul of that human at its successive stages of unfolding.  The identical outward occurrence is a different  experience  for each human being:  an experience is a relationship between a soul and an outer event.   Thus no two persons can have the same experience, because the identical event is quite different to each different soul. Similarly the reactions of each Culture-soul to externals of landscape, population-streams, and events and movements outside the Culture-area, are  individual  to each Culture.  The religious experiences of each Culture are unique: each Culture has its own non-transferable way of experiencing and depicting the Godhead, and this religious style continues right through the life span of the Culture, and determines completely the philosophy, science, and also the anti-religious phenomena of the Culture.  Each Culture has its own kind of atheism, as unique as its religion.  The philosophy and science of each Culture never become independent of the religious style of the Culture; even Materialism is only a profane caricature of the basic religious feeling of the Culture. The choice of art-forms, and the content of the art-forms, are individual to each Culture.  Thus the Western is the first to invent oil-painting, and the first to give primacy to music.  The number-feeling of the Culture develops in each its own mathematics, which describes its own number-world, which again is inwardly non-transferable, even though external developments may be partially taken over, and then inwardly transformed by other Cultures.  The State-idea is likewise individual, as are the Nation-idea, and the style of the final Imperium, the last political creation of the Culture. Each Culture has its own style in technics— weak and crude in the Classical and Mexican-Peruvian, colossal and earth-shaking in our own— its own war-style, its own relation to economics, its own historystyle, or organic  tempo.each Culture has a different basic Morale, which influences its social structure, feelings, and manners, its intensity of inner imperative, and thus the ethical style of its great men.  This basic morale determines the style of public life during the last great phase of the life of the Culture the Civilization. Not only are the Cultures differentiated from one another by their highly developed representation of the principle of individuality, but each age of each Culture has its own stamp, which sets it off from its preceding age, and from the succeeding.  These differences loom larger to the humans within a Culture than the difference between one Culture and another.  This is the optical illusion of greater size produced by nearness.  To us the difference between 1850 and 1950 seems vast— to the history of 2150 it will be much less so.  We have the feeling before we study history that 1300 and 1400 were spiritually much the same, but in fact, in that century there were spiritual developments as far-reaching as those between 1850 and 1950. Here again, the linear scheme distorted History utterly: it said “Ancient” and thought that thereby it was describing  one  thing, one general spirituality.  But Egypt and Babylonia both had their own corresponding phenomena to the islam Crusades, Gothic religion, Holy Roman Empire, Papacy, Feudalism, Scholasticism, Reformation, Absolute State, Enlightenment, Democracy, Materialism, Class War, Nationalism, and annihilation wars.  So did the others— the Chinese, Indian, Arabian, Classical, and Mexican.  The extent of information available is quite different with regard to the various Cultures, but enough remains to show the structure of History.  Between one age of Egyptian history and the next, there was as much difference as between 1700, the period of the Spanish Succession Wars, and 1800, the Napoleonic Wars.  This illusion about distance finds an analogy in the spatial world; a distant mountain range looks smooth; nearer, it is rocky. The idea that “civilization” was one certain thing, rather than an organic life-phase of a Culture, was a part of the “Progress” ideology.  This profane religion, its own peculiar mixture of Reason and Faith, satisfied a certain inner demand of the 19th century.  Further research will probably discover it in other Cultures.  It seems to be an organic necessity of Rationalism to feel that “things are getting better all the time.”  Thus “progress” was a continuous moral improvement of “humanity,” a movement toward more and better “civilization.”  The ideology was formulated slightly differently by each materialist, but it was not allowed to dispute that “Progress” occurred.  To do so marked one as a “pessimist.”  The ideal toward which there was continual “progress” was necessarily unattainable, for if it could be attained, “progress” would cease, and this was unthinkable. Such a picture fitted the Age of Criticism, but in an historical Age this picture becomes just one more object of interest, as being the expression of one certain life-stage of a certain Culture.  It is on a par with the world-picture of imminent catastrophe of mid-14th century, the witch obsession of the 16th century, the Reason-worship of the 18th century.  All these outlooks possess now only historical significance. What interests us is that once they were believed.  But as for trying to force the old-fashioned “progress” ideology on the 20th century, such an attempt is ludicrous; whoever would try stamps himself as an anachronistic mediocrity.