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An Essay on the Rise of Historical Pessimism in the Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

K. F. Helleiner
K. F. Helleiner*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

As indicated by the attribute “historical,” this essay is not concerned with evaluations on metaphysical grounds of life and the universe. Statements by philosophers to the effect that this is the best of all possible worlds, or that “life is a business the returns for which do not cover the costs by any means,” may indeed become objects of historical inquiry. After all, what has not become “historicized” these last hundred years! But investigations of that kind are not likely to yield any great results. Metaphysics, like mathematics, is all but timeless.

A good deal more closely related to historical and political categories are certain fundamental ideas regarding the nature of man. It has been observed that “the pessimistic view of human nature is, and has always been, the deepest sense of a conservative argument.” The inverse is true of a philosophy of progress, which is almost invariably based on an intrinsically optimistic evaluation of human nature. We shall have to touch occasionally upon that interdependence of metaphysical and politico-historical thought in the course of this inquiry. Our chief interest, however, centres on different problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , November 1942 , pp. 514 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1942

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in May, 1942.

References

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6 The following verses from Isaiah, chap, xxi, may serve as an example of an almost frightening intensity of time-consciousness, which seems to be altogether alien to modern feeling. “A grievous vision is declared unto me ; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. … Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me as the pangs of a woman that travaileth: I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it. My heart panted, tearfulness affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me.”

7 The reader will have noticed that we distinguish between “prediction” and “prophecy.” The former refers to the highest degree of rationalization, the latter to the climax of intensity of time-consciousness.

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24 Malthus, Thomas Robert, First Essay on Population, 1798 (reprinted London, 1926), p. 2.Google Scholar

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26 Ibid., p. 275.

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29 Ibid., preface, p. iv.

30 Burke, Edmund, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” p. 284.Google Scholar

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33 Ibid., pp. 321-2.

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35 Ibid., p. 489.

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39 De Maistre's interest in the concept of “metapolitics,” which had been recently introduced by German philosophers, is significant. “It means the same with respect to politics as the word metaphysics with respect to physics. This new term seems to me a very appropriate name for political metaphysics. For there is such a thing, and it deserves the full attention of the observer” (Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques, quoted by von Srbik, Heinrich, Metternich, 2 vols., Munich, 1925, vol. I, p. 331).Google Scholar For the following see Rohden, , Joseph de Maistre, pp. 137–8.Google Scholar

40 Morley, John, “Joseph de Maistre” (Critical Miscellanies, 3 vols., London, 1886–1909, vol. II, p. 291).Google Scholar

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42 von Eichendorff, Joseph, “Ahnung und Gegenwart” (Ausgewählte Werke, Leipzig, 1924, vol. II, pp. 270–1).Google Scholar

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47 Alexis de Tocqueville in a letter of April 28, 1850, quoted by Mayer, J. P., Prophet of the Mass Age: A Study of Alexis de Tocqueville (London, 1939), p. 109.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., p. 110.

49 Baron Viktor Andrian-Werburg, Osterreich und dessen Zunkunft, quoted by Bibl, Viktor, Der Zerfall Osterreichs (Vienna, 1924), vol. II, pp. 97–8.Google Scholar

50 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, “The Communist Manifesto” (A Handbook of Marxism, London, 1935, p. 22).Google Scholar

51 Schramm, Edmund, Donoso Cortés: Leben und Werk eines spanischen Antiliberalen (Hamburg, 1935), esp. p. 80.Google Scholar

52 Macaulay, Lord, The History of England (ed. Firth, Charles Harding, London, 1913–1915), vol. III, pp. 1311 ff.Google Scholar The passage quoted above was written in November, 1848.

53 Marx, and Engels, , “The Communist Manifesto,” pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

54 Even this statement needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The problem is complicated by the fact that class structure and class allegiance are by no means as simple phenomena as certain social psychologists would have it. It seems to me there is a good deal of question-begging about Mannheim's “sociology of knowledge.”

55 Burckhardt, Jacob, Briefe an einen Architekten, 1870-1889 (Munich, 1913), pp. 10–11 (04 16, 1875).Google Scholar

56 Burckhardt, Jacob, Briefe an seinen Freund Friedrich von Preen, 1864-1893 (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1922), p. 113 (12 31, 1877).Google Scholar

57 Ibid., p. 105 (May 30, 1877).

58 The first part (L'ancien Régime) was published in 1876, the following volumes on the Revolution appeared in 1878, 1881, and 1884 respectively. The last section of the work (Le Régime moderne) remained unfinished and was published posthumously.

59 Taine, , The French Revolution, vol. I, preface, p. vi.Google Scholar

60 Taine, , The Ancient Régime, preface, p. viii.Google Scholar Similarly in the preface to vol. III of The French Revolution, p. v, “This volume, like the others that have gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of understanding.”

61 Letter to E. Havet of March 24, 1878, quoted by Monod, Gabriel, Les Maîtres de l'Histoire: Renan, Taine, Michelet (Paris, 1894), p. 124.Google Scholar

62 Taine, , The French Revolution, vol. II, preface.Google Scholar The italics are Taine's.

63 Burke, , “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” p. 334.Google Scholar “The objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity.”

64 It may be added, however, that even a radical thinker like Harold J. Laski has found it advisable occasionally to emphasize the fragile nature of civilization and the social order. Cf. Laski, H. J., Liberty in the Modern State (Penguin edition, 1937), p. 91.Google Scholar “We should remember that civilization is, at best, a fragile thing, and that to embark upon a challenge to order is to threaten what little security it has. It may even be wise, as T. H. Green once put it, to assume that we should approach the state in fear and trembling.”

65 Burke, , “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” p. 300.Google Scholar “These old fanatics [sc. the champions of the Divine Right of Kings] … dogmatized as if hereditary royalty was the only lawful government in the world, just as our new fanatics … maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful source of authority.”

66 Gibbon, , Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, p. 146.Google Scholar “But our more serious thoughts will respect a useful prejudice [sc. hereditary monarchy], that establishes a rule of succession, independent of the passions of mankind.”

67 Burke, , “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” p. 359.Google Scholar “You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that … instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree. … We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them.” This, it would appear, is still the language of Enlightenment.

68 The resemblance of thought between Bagehot's, Walter Physics and Politics (1872)Google Scholar and Taine's Origins of Contemporary France is so close that it can be safely assumed that the Frenchman knew the book, which was almost immediately translated into French (a first French edition was published in 1873, a second in 1875). We have, however, no means of proving the dependence conclusively.

69 Taine, , The Ancient Régime, p. 208.Google Scholar

70 Taine, , The French Revolution, vol. I, p. 248 Google Scholar; vol. III, p. 204. It is instructive to compare Bagehot, , Physics and Politics, pp. 154–5.Google Scholar “We now understand why order and civilization are so unstable even in progressive communities. We see frequently in states what physiologists call “Atavism’—the return, in part, to the unstable nature of their ancestors. Such scenes of cruelty and horror as happened in the great French Revolution, and as happen, more or less, in every great riot, have always been said to bring out a secret and suppressed side of human nature; and we now see that they were the outbreak of inherited passions long repressed by fixed custom, but starting into life as sbon as that repression was catastrophically removed, and when sudden choice was given.”

71 Ibid., vol. II, p. 351. Taine expressly refers to Lombroso's, Cesare L'Uomo delinquente, which had been published in 1876.Google Scholar

72 Nietzsche, Friedrich, “Beyond Good and Evil” (Works, ed. Levy, Oscar, 18 vols., Edinburgh, 1909–1930, vol. XII, p. 13).Google Scholar

73 Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Will to Power” (ibid., vol. XIV, p. 55).

74 Burckhardt, Jacob, “Historische Fragmente aus dem Nachlass” (Gesamtausgabe, 14 vols., Stuttgart, 1930–1934, vol. VII, p. 423).Google Scholar