INTRODUCTION. SECTION I. DESIGN OF THIS HISTORY. THE HISTORY of the ancient people of Israel lies far behind us, as a concluded portion of human events. Its last page was written eighteen centuries ago; and no one able to read it, or even to decipher a few of its hardly legible characters, will expect from the future a new page to complete this chapter of the world's history. This is the basis of its first use for us. For those portions of universal history whose varying fortunes reach down into the conflicts of the present, are in themselves more difficult to survey and to describe correctly: and, even when described by a historian of profound insight and impartial judgment, are unwelcome to the many, whose eye is dazzled by the illusions, and whose heart is enslaved to the chances of the day. Any one who should now write the history of Hanover since the year 1830, might be doing a work which would benefit an unprejudiced posterity; but at present, though he spoke with the tongues of angels, he would speak to the winds. But even when the history is further removed as to time, the truth is less likely to find a fruitful soil, if the people or the constitution which it concerns is the same. Thus many very learned Germans are incapable of understanding even the Middle Ages, or the time of the Reformation--periods which are yet far removed from our present position and requirements. The case is entirely different with those portions of history which we not only find completely finished and irreversibly sentenced, but which do not immediately concern our country and people, or our constitution and religion. There every passion and strife is for ever hushed for us; we are no longer fellowactors on that stage, compelled by the inevitable arrangements B of the play to represent our respective parts only: but we stand afar off as mere spectators, and tranquilly let the whole great drama pass before us, through all its perplexities and denouements, down to its final close. There the manifest results of the once varied and complicated play have long ago written down its great moral, in generally intelligible and eternal characters, which no one can refuse to study; so that, though the successful investigation of histories thus remote may cost more trouble than the writing of the history of our own time, its utility for the present may be so much the greater. For though the study of these remote histories is in the first instance only an exercise of the eye and judgment, which strengthens the better disposed, and directs others to surprising truths, which they will not see in the present; yet this silent influence will go deeper, and affect decisions and acts also-and the past, with its struggles and its lessons, will not have been in vain for us. The most evident and certain truths of history are found here in abundance, and above all dispute. This history is, moreover, that of an original people belonging, as to the period of its prime, to remote antiquity, which, though constantly in close contact with many other peoples, followed out, with the strictest independence and the noblest effort, a peculiar problem of the human mind to its highest summit, and did not perish until it had attained it. The history of the antiquity of all nations that have in anywise raised themselves to a lofty stage of human effort, in general not only shows us the rudiments of the same mental powers and arts which still exist, more or less pursued and developed, among ourselves; but also leads us, through more perfect knowledge of their origin and formation, to a nearer view into their necessity and their eternal conditions. For it will always be instructive to discern how polity, laws, poetry, literature, and similar intellectual possessions, have developed themselves in a nation, when they spring from no idle imitation and halfrepetition, but from impulses and powers inherent in the nation, and therefore with all freshness and energy. Nay, such study is indispensable, to preserve us from being overwhelmed or confused by the great wealth, or endless wilderness, of traditionary thoughts and secondhand clevernesses, with which later times are inundated, and to elevate us again to what is original, independent, and necessary. Now ancient nations are generally distinguished by a greater restriction as to space and place, by a narrow attachment to their own sanctuary and country, by a shy fear of what is strange, and a strict sepa ration according to religions, customs, and views: for the rapid communication of distant lands with each other, and the frequent interchange of opinions, doctrines, and worships, date, with trivial exceptions, from the latest centuries of antiquity, which altogether display a great resemblance to what we call modern times. One consequence of this excessive self-enclosure of each nation, with its inherited possessions and its favourite views, was that each more easily adopted its own characteristic aim and activity. For as, in consequence of this very isolation, the religions and gods were infinitely various, and every energetic people conceived itself to dwell in the centre of the earth, and regarded the world only from its own point of view ; so it formed its peculiar estimate of the prizes of life, and pursued what appeared to it the highest aims in its own special way. Everything was on this account more domestic, more hearty, more limited-therefore also more varied and manifold. And as the intellectual aims, contests, and victories possible to the mind are numerous and diverse, so we see that every nation that pursued a lofty career in the open arena of such aspirations, chose one special high aim, which became the pivot of everything in it, and which, even under frequent intercourse with foreigners, was never relinquished. But because every nobler nation, to which the happiness of thus aspiring was early allotted, then devoted the whole youthful energy of its intellectual efforts to the attainment of this one aim, and pursued that sole good which was its chief end with courageous pertinacity-nay often, at first, with truly Titanic efforts--to the uttermost: therefore those wonderful results were produced-those finished works of some nations of antiquity, of which history tells, and the effects of which still endure. Thus Babylonians, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, each under favourable circumstances, pursued one particular aim-to a height which in some respects no subsequent nations have ever again reached. And even when each nation reached its highest ascent, and its day began to decline, it was still occupied in the exclusive pursuit, as if all its energies had just sufficed to reach that one height. The problems of the human mind, moreover, which these ancient nations have severally solved with wonderful independence and consistency have borne infinite fruits for all subsequent times, and for the most different and distant peoples. This whole truth especially applies to that ancient nation whose history is to be 1 Observe how Amos (vii. 17), Hosea (ix. 3), and other similar prophets call every foreign land polluted or unholy; or how the poets of the seventh century regard sojourn in foreign countries. (See Ewald's Psalmen, 2nd ed. pp. 183 et seq.) 2 Compare Ezek. v. 5; the Koran, Sur. ii. 137. |