I say, it is the law which commands me to act that of itself assigns an end to my action; the same inward voice that compels me to think that I ought to act thus, compels me also to believe that from my action some result will arise; it opens to my spiritual vision a prospect into another world, — which is really a world, a state, namely, and not an action, — but another and better world than that which is present to the physical eye; it makes me aspire after this better world, em brace it with every impulse, long for its realization, live only in it, and in it alone find satisfaction. The law itself is my guarantee for the certain attainment of this end. The same resolution by which I devote my whole thought and life to the fulfilment of this law. and determine to see nothing beyond it, brings with it the indestructible conviction, that the promise it implies is likewise true and certain, and renders it impossible for me even to conceive the possibility of the opposite. As I live in obedience to it, I live also in the contem plation of its end; live in that better world which it promises to me.
u u 2 490 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
Even in the mere consideration of tie world as it is, apart from this law, there arises within me the wish, the desire, — no, not the mere desire, but the abso lute demand for a better world. I cast a glance on the present relations of men towards each other, and towards Nature; on the feebleness of their powers, the strength of their desires and passions. A voice within me proclaims with irresistible conviction — " It is im possible that it can remain thus; it must all become different and better."
I cannot think of the present state of humanity as that in which it is destined to remain; I am absolutely unable to conceive of this as its complete and final vocation. Then, indeed, were all a dream and a de lusion; and it would not be worth the trouble to have lived, and played out this ever-repeated game, which tends to nothing, and signifies nothing. Only in so far as I can regard this state as the means of a better, as the transition point to a higher and more perfect state, has it any value in my eyes; — not for its own sake, but for the sake of that better world for which it prepares the way, can I support it, esteem it, and joyfully perform my part in it. My mind can take no place in the present, nor rest in it even for a moment, but is irresistibly repelled from it; my whole being flows onward, heedless of restraint or barrier, towards that future and better state of things.
Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink BOOK III. FAITH. 491 and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered; — this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself?
This can never be the vocation of my being, and of all being. There must be something which exists because it has come into existence; and now endures, and cannot again re-appear, having once become such as it is. And this element of permanent endurance must be produced amid the vicissitudes of the transi tory and perishable, maintain itself there, and be borne onwards, pure and inviolate, upon the waves of time.
Our race still laboriously extorts the means of its subsistence and preservation from an opposing Nature. The larger portion of mankind is still condemned through life to severe toil, in order to supply nourishment for itself and for the smaller portion which thinks for it; —immortal spirits are compelled to fix their whole thoughts and endeavours on the earth that brings forth their food. It still frequently happens, that when the labourer has finished his toil, and promises himself in return a lasting endurance both for himself and for his work, a hostile element will destroy in a moment that which it has cost him years of patient industry and deliberation to accomplish, and the assiduous and care ful man is undeservedly made the prey of hunger and misery; — often do floods, storms, volcanoes, desolate whole countries, and works which bear the impress of a rational soul are mingled with their authors in the 492 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
wild chaos of death and destruction. Disease sweeps into an untimely grave men in the pride of their strength, and children whose existence has as yet borne no fruit; pestilence stalks through blooming lands, leaves the few who escape its ravages like lonely orphans bereaved of the accustomed support of their fellows, and does all that it can do to give back to the desert regions which the labour of man has won from thence as a possession to himself. Thus it is now, but thus it cannot remain for ever. No work that bears the stamp of Reason, and has been undertaken to extend her power, can ever be wholly lost in the onward progress of the ages. The sacrifices which the irregular violence of Nature extorts from Reason, must at least exhaust, disarm, and appease that violence. The same power which has burst out into lawless fury, cannot again commit like excesses; it cannot be destined to renew its strength; through its own outbreak its energies must hence forth and for ever be exhausted. All those outbreaks of unregulated power before which human strength vanishes into nothing, those desolating hurricanes, those earthquakes, those volcanoes, can be nothing else than the last struggles of the rude mass against the law of regular, progressive, living, and systematic activity to which it is compelled in opposition to its own undi rected impulses; — nothing but the last shivering strokes by which the perfect formation of our globe has yet to be completed. That resistance must gradually be come weaker and at length be exhausted, since, in the regulated progress of things, there can be nothing to renew its strength; that formation must at length be completed, and our destined dwelling-place be made ready. Nature must gradually be resolved into a con- BOOK III. FAITH. 493 dition in which her regular action may be calculated and safely relied upon, and her power bear a fixed and definite relation to that which is destined to govern it, — that of man. In so far as this relation already exists, and the cultivation of Mature has obtained a firm footing, the works of man, by their mere existence, and by an influence altogether beyond the original intent of their authors, shall again react upon Nature, and become to her a new vivifying principle. Cul tivation shall quicken and ameliorate the sluggish and baleful atmosphere of the primeval forests, deserts, and marshes; more regular and varied cultivation shall diffuse throughout the air new impulses to life and fer tility; and the sun shall pour his most animating rays into an atmosphere breathed by healthful, industrious, and civilized nations. Science, first caUed into exist ence by the pressure of necessity, shall afterwards calmly and carefully investigate the unchangeable laws of Nature, review its powers at large, and learn to cal culate their possible manifestations; and while closely following the footsteps of Nature in the living and actual world, form for itself in thought a new ideal one. Every discovery which Reason has extorted from Nature shall be maintained throughout the ages, and become the ground of new knowledge, for the common possession of our race. Thus shall Nature ever become more and more intelligible and transparent, even in her most secret depths; and human power, enlightened and armed by human invention, shall rule over her without difficulty, and the conquest, once made, be peacefully maintained. This dominion of man over Nature shall gradually be extended, until, at length, no farther expenditure of mechanical labour shall be 494 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
necessary than what the human body requires for its development, cultivation, and health; and this labour shall cease to be a burden; — for a reasonable being is not destined to be a bearer of burdens.
But it is not Nature, it is Freedom itself, by which the greatest and most terrible disorders incident to our race are produced; man is the cruelest enemy of man. Lawless hordes of savages still wander over vast wil dernesses; — they meet, and the victor devours his foe at the triumphal feast: — or where culture has at length united these wild hordes under some social bond, they attack each other, as nations, with the power which law and union have given them. Defying toil and pri vation, their armies traverse peaceful plains and forests; — they meet each other, and the sight of their brethren is the signal for slaughter. Equipt with the mightiest inventions of the human understanding, hostile fleets plough a way through the ocean; through storm and tempest man rushes to meet his fellow-man upon the lonely, inhospitable sea; — they meet, and defy the fury of the elements, that they may destroy each other with their own hands. Even in the interior of states, where men seem to be united in equality under the law, it is still for the most part only force and fraud which rule under that venerable name; and here the warfare is so much the more shameful that it is not openly declared to be war, and the party attacked is even deprived of the privilege of defending himself against unjust oppression. Smaller associations rejoice aloud in the ignorance, the folly, the vice, and the misery in which the greater number of their brethren are sunk, and make it their avowed object to retain them in this state of degradation, and even to plunge BOOK III. FAITH. 495 them deeper in it, in order that they may perpetuate their slavery to themselves, — and to destroy any one who should venture to enlighten or improve them. No attempt at amelioration can anywhere be made without rousing up from slumber a host of selfish interests, and exciting them to war against it; without uniting together the most varied and opposite opinions in a common hostility. The good cause is ever the weaker, for it is simple, and can be loved for itself alone; the bad attracts each individual by the promise which is most seductive to him; and its adherents, always at war among themselves, so soon as the good makes its appearance, conclude a truce, that they may unite the whole powers of their wickedness against it. Scarcely, indeed, is such an opposition needed, for even the good themselves are but too often divided by misunderstand ing, error, distrust, and secret self-love; and that so much the more violently, the more earnestly each strives to propagate that which he recognises as best, and thus dissipates by internal discord a power, which, even when united, could scarcely hold the balance with evil. One blames the other for rushing onwards with stormy im patience to his object, without waiting until the good result shall have been prepared; whilst the other blames him that, through hesitation and cowardice, he accomplishes nothing, but allows things to remain as they are, contrary to his better conviction; and that for him the hour of action never arrives: — and only the Omniscient can determine whether either of the parties in the dispute is in the right. Every one regards the undertaking, the necessity of which is most apparent to him, and in the prosecution of which he has acquired the greatest skill, as the most important 496 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
and needful, — as the point from which all improve ment must proceed; he requires all good men to unite their efforts with his, and to subject them to him for the accomplishment of his particular purpose, and holds it to be treason to the good cause if they refuse; — while they on the other hand make the same demands upon him, and accuse him of similar treason, should he re fuse. Thus do all good intentions among men appear to be lost in vain disputations, which leave behind them no trace of their existence; while in the meantime the world goes on as well, or as ill, as it can without human effort, by the blind mechanism of Nature, — and so will go on for ever.
And so go on for ever? — No; — not so, unless the whole existence of humanity is to be an idle game, without significance and without end. It cannot be intended that those savage tribes should always re main savage: no race can be born with all the capa cities of perfect humanity, and yet be destined never to develop these capacities, and never to become more than that which a sagacious animal by its own proper nature might become. Those savages must be des tined to be the progenitors of more powerful, culti vated, and virtuous generations; — otherwise it is im possible to conceive of a purpose in their existence, or even of the possibility of their existence in a world ordered and arranged by reason. Savage races may become civilized, for this has already occurred, and the most cultivated nations of modern times are the descendants of savages. Whether civilization be a direct and natural development of human society, or BOOK III. FAITH. 497 invariably arise through instruction and example from without, and the primary source of all human culture must be sought in a super-human guidance, — by the same way in which nations which once were savage have emerged into civilization, will those who are yet unci vilized gradually attain it. They must, no doubt, at first pass through the same dangers and corruptions of a merely sensual civilization, by which the civilized nations are still oppressed, but they will thereby be brought into union with the great whole of humanity, and be made capable of taking part in its farther progress.
It is the vocation of our race to unite itself into one single body, all the parts of which shall be thoroughly known to each other, and all possessed of similar cul ture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of men, have from the beginning tended towards this end; a great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that this end, which is the condition of all farther social progress, will in time be attained. Let us not ask of history if man, on the whole, have yet become purely moral! To a more extended, comprehensive, energetic freedom he has certainly attained; but it has been hitherto an almost necessary result of his position, that this freedom has been applied chiefly to evil purposes. Neither let us ask whether the esthetic and intellectual culture of the ancient world, concentrated on a few points, may not have excelled in degree that of modern times! It might happen that we should receive a humiliating answer, and that in this respect the human race has not advanced, but rather seemed to retrograde, in its riper years. But let us ask of history at what x x 498 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
period the existing culture has been most widely dif fused, and distributed among the greatest number of individuals; and we shall doubtless find that from the beginning of history down to our own day, the few light-points of civilization have spread themselves abroad from their centre, that one individual after an other, and one nation after another, has been embraced within their circle, and that this wider outspread of culture is proceeding under our own eyes. And this is the first point to be attained in the endless path on which humanity must advance. Until this shall have been attained, until the existing culture of every age shall have been diffused over the whole in habited globe, and our race become capable of the most unlimited inter-communication with itself, one nation or one continent must pause on the great com mon path of progress, and wait for the advance of the others; and each must bring as an offering to the uni versal commonwealth, for the sake of which alone it exists, its ages of apparent immobility or retrogression. When that first point shall have been attained, when every useful discovery made at one end of the earth shall be at once made known and communicated to all the rest, then, without farther interruption, without halt or regress, with united strength and equal step, humanity shall move onward to a higher culture, of which we can at present form no conception.
Within those singular associations, thrown together by unreasoning accident, which we call States, — after they have subsisted for a time in peace, when the re sistance excited by yet new oppression has been lulled to sleep, and the fermentation of contending forces appeased, — abuse, by its continuance, and by general BOOK III. FAITH. 499 sufferance, assumes a sort of established form; and the ruling classes, in the uncontested enjoyment of their extorted privileges, have nothing more to do but to extend them further, and to give to this extension also the same established form. Urged by their insatiable desires, they will continue from generation to generation their efforts to acquire wider and yet wider privileges, and never say " It is enough! " until at last oppression shall reach its limit, and become wholly insupportable, and despair give back to the oppressed that power which their courage, extinguished by centuries of tyranny, could not procure for them. They will then no longer endure any among them who cannot be satisfied to be on an equality with others, and so to remain. In order to protect themselves against internal violence or new oppression, all will take on themselves the same obligations. Their deliberations, in which every man shall decide, whatever he decides, for himself, and not for one subject to him whose sufferings will never affect him, and in whose fate he takes no concern; — deliberations, according to which no one can hope that it shall be he who is to practise a permitted injustice, but every one must fear that he may have to suffer it; — deliberations that alone deserve the name of legis lation, which is something wholly different from the ordinances of combined lords to the countless herds of their slaves; — these deliberations will necessarily be guided by justice, and will lay the foundation of a true State, in which each individual, from a regard for his own security, will be irresistibly compelled to respect the security of every other without exception; since, under the supposed legislation, every injury which he should attempt to do to another, would not 500 THE VOCATION OF MAN.
fall upon its object, but would infallibly recoil upon himself.
By the establishment of this only true State, this firm foundation of internal peace, the possibility of foreign war, at least with other true states, is cut off. Even for its own advantage, even to prevent the thought of injustice, plunder, and violence entering the minds of its own citizens, and to leave them no possibility of gain, except by means of industry and diligence within their legitimate sphere of activity, every true state must forbid as strictly, prevent as carefully, compen sate as exactly, or punish as severely, any injury to the citizen of a neighbouring state, as to one of its own. This law concerning the security of neighbours is ne cessarily a law in every state that is not a robber-state; and by its operation the possibility of any just com plaint of one state against another, and consequently every case of self-defence among nations, is entirely pre vented. There are no necessary, permanent, and imme diate relations of states, as such, with each other, which might be productive of strife; there are, properly speak ing, only relations of the individual citizens of one state to the individual citizens of another; a state can be injured only in the person of one of its citizens; but such injury will be immediately compensated, and the ag grieved state satisfied. Between such states as these, there is no rank which can be insulted, no ambition which can be offended. No officer of one state is authorised to intermeddle in the internal affairs of an other, nor is there any temptation for him to do so, since he could not derive the slightest personal advan tage from any such influence. That a whole nation should determine, for the sake of plunder, to make war BOOK III. FAITH. 501 on a neighbouring country, is impossible; for in a state where all are equal, the plunder could not be come the booty of a few, but must be equally divided amongst all, and the share of no one individual could ever recompense him for the trouble of the war. Only where the advantage falls to the few oppressors, and the injury, the toil, the expense, to the countless herd of slaves, is a war of spoliation possible and conceivable. Not from states like themselves could such states as these entertain any fear of war; only from savages or barbarians, whose lack of skill to enrich themselves by industry impels them to plunder; or from enslaved nations, driven by their masters to a war from which they themselves will reap no advantage. In the for mer case, every individual state must, through the arts of civilization, already be the stronger party; against the latter danger, the common advantage of all de mands that they should strengthen themselves by union. No free state can reasonably suffer in its vicinity as sociations governed by rulers whose interests would be promoted by the subjugation of adjacent nations, and whose very existence is therefore a constant source of danger to their neighbours; a regard for their own