Johann Gottfried Herder

"Each strives with each, as each is pressed upon; each must provide for his own subsistence, and defend his own life."

"Why acts nature thus? and why does she thus crowd her creatures one upon another? Because she would produce the greatest number and variety of living beings in the least space, so that one crushes another, and an equilibrium of powers can alone produce peace in the creation. Every species cares for itself, as if it were the only one in existence: but by its side stands another, which confines it within due bounds: and in this adjustment of opposing species creative nature found the only mean of maintaining the whole. She weighed the powers, she numbered the limbs, she determined the instincts of the species toward each other; and left the earth to produce what it was capable of producing."

"…nothing in Nature stands still; everything strives and moves forward. If we could only view the first stages of creation, how the kingdoms of nature were built one upon the other, a progression of forward-striving forces would reveal itself in all evolution."

"In his later work, in particular, he voices considerable animus against British colonization in India; in his 1803 preface to a new edition of Forster’s Sakuntala, he says that “English rhyme schemes suit Indian poetry as searing-hot water acts on the sweet blooms of the Mallika, which singe and destroy them (as the English do the Hindus themselves),” and deplores the fact that “‘this cultural and spiritual treasure of the most peace-loving nation of our earth” has been entrusted to ‘the most commerce-driven nation of the globe.”’ In an essay of 1802 entitled ‘“Conversations about the Conversion of the Indians by Our European Christians” he is even more vehemently critical. The non-European asks hard questions of the European: now that Europe has “subjugated, robbed, plundered, and murdered” the Indians, do they want to convert them? “If someone came to your land and explained your holy of holies, laws, religion, wisdom, state organization, etc. in an arrogant manner, with the most vulgar person in mind as an audience, how would you greet him?” The European weakly responds: ‘‘This case is different. We have power, ships, wealth, cannons, culture.”"4® Similarly, Herder rages against Jesuit attempts to convert the Chinese, which have resulted, reports, in the persecution of perhaps as many as 300,000 Chinese Christians. “And for how many banishments, imprisonments and beatings of converted mandarins are the foreign proselytizers guilty! And why do the converted suffer? For foreign words and customs.’’"

"Der Appetit nach einer schönen Frucht ist angenehmer als die Frucht selbst."

"Calmly take what ill betideth; Patience wins the crown at length: Rich repayment him abideth Who endures in quiet strength. Brave the tamer of the lion; Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise; Bravest he who rules his passions, Who his own impatience sways."

"With the regret of a traveler, obliged to leave a country before he learned to know it as he wished, I take leave of Asia. How little we know of it! What we do know comes from such late periods and from such dubious authorities! The eastern part of Asia has become known to us only recently through religious or political parties, and in the hands of scholars in Europe has become so confused in parts that we still see great stretches of it as a fairytale land. In the Near East and in neighboring Egypt everything from all periods appears to us as a ruin or a vanished dream; what we know from written sources we know only from the mouths of passing Greeks, who were partly too young and partly of too foreign a way of thinking to under- stand the deep antiquity of these states; they were only able to grasp what interested them. The archives of Babylon, Phoenicia, and Carthage are no more: Egypt was in its decline, almost before a single Greek visited its interior. Everything has been shrunk down to a few faded pages, containing fables of fables, fragments of history, a dream of the prehistorical world."

"You see, my friend, how holy these books are to me, and how much I (according to Voltaire’s ridicule) am a Jew, when | read them: for should we not be Greeks and Romans, when we read [the works of] Greeks and Romans? Every book must be read in its own spirit, and so too the book of books, the Bible; and since this one contains, from the beginning to the end, the revealed spirit of God... we cannot do anything more perverse than to read God’s texts with the spirit of Satan, that is, to embellish the oldest wisdom by invoking the most recent stupidities, [or to explain) heavenly simplicity by means of today’s roguish witticisms."

"Was in dem Herzen andrer von Uns lebt, Ist unser wahrestes und tiefstes Selbst."

"Sag' o Weiser, wodurch du zu solchem Wissen gelangtest? "Dadurch, daß ich mich nie andre zu fragen geschämt.""

"Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity."

"[India is the] lost paradise of all religions and philosophies," "the cradle of humanity," and also its "eternal home," and the great Orient "waiting to be discovered within ourselves."... "mankind's origins can be traced to India, where the human mind got the first shapes of wisdom and virtue with simplicity, strength and sublimity which has - frankly spoken - nothing, nothing at all equivalent in our philosophical, cold European world."... "O holy land (India), I salute thee, thou source of all music, thou voice of the heart' ... "Behold the East - cradle of the human race, of human emotion, of all religion.""

"It is therefore indisputable, that the Brahman had educated their people towards a certain gentleness, moderation and purity, or, at the very least, had strengthened them in these virtues, so that, conversely, to them the Europeans often appeared dirty, drunken and raving. Their bearing and language are spontaneous and graceful, their relations are peaceful, their bodies are clean, and their way of life is simple and harmless. Children are raised in a mild manner, yet they nevertheless are not lacking in knowledge, nor even less in quiet industry and the fine, though imitative, arts; even the lowest tribes learn to read, write and count. Therefore, since the Brahman were for millennia the educators of the youth, they have provided an unequivocal service to humanity."

"Herder (1803) objected that "the pains that have been taken, to make of all the people of the earth, according to this genealogy, descendants of the Hebrew, and half-brothers of the Jews, are contrary not only to chronology and universal history but to the true point of view of the narrative itself." As far as he was concerned, "the central point of the largest quarter of the Globe, the primitive mountains of Asia, prepared the first abode of the human race" (517-18)."

"Let us abandon these regions where our predecessors, like Buet, Buxtorf or Bochart, sought the beginnings of the world! These corners of Arabia and Judaea, these basins of the Nile and the Euphrates, these coasts of Phoenicia and Damascus, where the human race might have come into existence like mice or rats; all these must be left behind! Let us scale the mountain laboriously to the summit of Asia. Where will this lead us? The horizons swing back and forth. History, which has dated all things from that beginning, will have another beginning and another end."

"The Hindus are the gentlest branch of humanity. They do not with pleasure offend anything that lives; they honor that which gives life and nourish themselves with the most innocent of foods, milk, rice, the fruits of the trees, the healthy herbs which their motherland dispenses . . . Moderation and calm, a soft feeling and a silent depth of the soul characterize their work and their pleasure, their morals and mythology, their arts and even their endurance under the most extreme yoke of humanity."

"The Bramins have formed their people to such a degree of gentleness, courtesy, temperance and chastity, or at least have so confirmed them in these virtues, that Europeans frequently appear, on comparison with them, as beastly, drunken or mad. In their air and language they are unconstrainedly elegant; in their behaviour, friendly; in their persons, clean; in their way of life, simple and harmless ... they are not destitute of knowledge, still less of quiet industry or nicely imitative art; even the lowest castes learn reading, writing and arithmetic. . . ."

"Die zwei größten Tyrannen der Erde, der Zufall und die Zeit."

"Jeder liebt sein Land, seine Sitten, seine Sprache, sein Weib, seine Kinder, nicht weil sie die besten auf der Welt, sondern weil sie die bewährten Seinigen sind, und er in ihnen sich und seine Mühe selbst liebt."

"Das Maschinenwerk der Revolutionen irret mich also nicht mehr: es ist unserm Geschlecht so nötig, wie dem Strom seine Wogen, damit er nicht ein stehender Sumpf werde. Immer verjüngt in neuen Gestalten, blüht der Genius der Humanität."

"Air, fire, water and the earth evolve out of the spiritual and material staminibus in periodic cycles of time. Diverse connections of water, air, and light precede the emergence of the seed of the simplest plant, for instance moss. Many plants had to come into being, then die away before an animal emerged. Insects, birds, water animals, and night animals preceded the present animal forms; until finally the crown of earthly organization appeared—the human being, microcosm. He is the son of all the elements and beings, Nature’s most carefully chosen conception and the blossom of creation. He must be the youngest child of Nature; many evolutions and revolutions must have preceded his formation."

"Wie hinfällig alles Menschenwerk, ja wie drückend auch die beste Einrichtung in wenigen Geschlechtern werde. Die Pflanze blühet und blühet ab; eure Väter starben und verwesen: euer Tempel zerfällt: dein Orakelzelt, deine Gesetztafeln sind nicht mehr: das ewige Band der Menschen, die Sprache selbst veraltet; wie? und Eine Menschenverfassung, Eine politische oder Religionseinrichtung, die doch nur auf diese Stücke gebauet sein kann: sie sollte, sie wollte ewig dauern?"

"Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe."

"Nowhere on earth does the rose of happiness blossom without thorns; but what bursts forth out of these thorns is everywhere and in various guises the transient, yet beautiful rose of man’s joy in living."

"We (Goethe and Herder) had not lived together long in this manner when he confided to me that he meant to be competitor for the prize which was offered at Berlin, for the best treatise on the origin of language. His work was already nearly completed, and, as he wrote a very neat hand, he could soon communicate to me, in parts, a legible manuscript. I had never reflected on such subjects, for I was yet too deeply involved in the midst of things to have thought about their beginning and end. The question, too, seemed to me in some measure and idle one; for if God had created man as man, language was just as innate in him as walking erect; he must have just as well perceived that he could sing with his throat, and modify the tones in various ways with tongue, palate, and lips, as he must have remarked that he could walk and take hold of things. If man was of divine origin, so was also language itself: and if man, considered in the circle of nature was a natural being, language was likewise natural. These two things, like soul and body, I could never separate. Silberschlag, with a realism crude yet somewhat fantastically devised, had declared himself for the divine origin, that is, that God had played the schoolmaster to the first men. Herder’s treatise went to show that man as man could and must have attained to language by his own powers. I read the treatise with much pleasure, and it was of special aid in strengthening my mind; only I did not stand high enough either in knowledge or thought to form a solid judgment upon it. But one was received just like the other; there was scolding and blaming, whether one agreed with him conditionally or unconditionally. The fat surgeon (Lobstein) had less patience than I; he humorously declined the communication of this prize-essay, and affirmed that he was not prepared to meditate on such abstract topics. He urged us in preference to a game of ombre, which we commonly played together in the evening."

"Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder boldly proclaimed this idea, asserting that each age and every people embody ideals and capacities peculiar to themselves, thus allowing a fuller and more complete expression of the multiform potentialities of humankind than could otherwise occur. Herder expressly denied that one people or civilization was better than another. They were just different, in the same way that the German language was different from the French."

"About the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions and even clear presentations of this or that part of a large evolutionary doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most divergent quarters. Especially remarkable were those which came from Erasmus Darwin in England, from Maupertuis in France, from Oken in Switzerland, and from Herder, and, most brilliantly of all, from Goethe in Germany."

"Over the years, historians have tried to discern grand patterns, perhaps one grand pattern, that explain everything. For some religions, history provides evidence of the working out of a divine purpose. For the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, it demonstrated the manifestation of the infinite spirit (Geist) on earth. Karl Marx built on Hegel to produce his “scientific” history, which purported to show that history was moving inexorably toward its destined end of full Communism. Johann Gottfried von Herder, the influential German thinker of the late eighteenth century, history showed that an organic German nation had existed for centuries, although in political terms it had not yet reached its full potential. For imperialists like Sir Charles Dilke, the study of the past confirmed the superiority of the British race. Arnold Toynbee, whose work is largely neglected now, saw a pattern of challenge and response as civilizations grew great in overcoming obstacles and then failed as they turned soft and lazy. The Chinese, unlike most Western thinkers, did not see history as a linear process at all. Their scholars talked in terms of a dynastic cycle where dynasties came and went in an unending repetition, following the unchanging pattern of birth, maturity, and death, all under the aegis of heaven."

"Wir leben immer in einer Welt, die wir uns selbst bilden."

"For every ancient nation likes to consider itself the firstborn and to take its territory for humanity’s birthplace."

"Should there not be manifest progress and development but in a higher sense than people have imagined it? ... No one is in his age alone, he builds on the preceding one, this becomes nothing but the foundation of the future, wants to be nothing but that — this is what we are told by the analogy in nature, God’s speaking exemplary model in all works! Manifestly so in the human species!"

"Am sorgfältigsten, mein Freund, meiden Sie die Autorschaft darüber. Zu früh oder unmäßig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wüste und das Herz leer, wenn sie auch sonst keine üblen Folgen gäbe. Ein Mensch, der die Bibel nur lieset, um sie zu erläutern, lieset sie wahrscheinlich übel, und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstößt, durch Feder und Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden."

"[I]m Zusammensetzen selbst liegt die Energie der Rede; nichts mehr."

"Kunst kommt von Können oder von Kennen her (nosse aut potesse), vielleicht von beiden, wenigstens muß sie beides in gehörigem Grad verbinden."

"Süß wie dem durstenden Wandrer in Mittagshitze der Quell ist; süß wie nach Wintergefahr Schiffern das blumige Land; Also und süsser noch ists, wenn nach langer Entfernung glückliche Liebe zwei sehnende Seelen vereint."

"Mensch, genieße dein Leben, als müssest morgen du weggehn; Schone dein Leben, als ob ewig du weiletest hier."

"Gewöhnlich hält man nichts von geringerem Werth als Sprüche; wie bald, denkt man, ist ein Spruch gesagt!"

"Das wirst du finden, wenn du acht giebst, wie die Welt ist, und lange vor Machiavell war. Die dem Recht vorstehen, sind oft die ungerechtsten; die der Religion vorstehen, häufig die Gottlosesten; die der Gelehrsamkeit vorstehen, oft die unerfahrensten; die über Geschäfte gesetzt sind, die trägsten; die die Humanität befördern sollen, die inhumansten."

"Arm an Reizen ist unser Leben und dürftig an Freuden, wenn wir die Sorgen nicht reißen aus unserer Brust. Graue Haare pflanzen sie auf, dem grünenden Scheitel; zehren der Menschen Gemüth wütend und wütender aus, [...]"

"Wir lieben immer mehr das Halbe als das Ganze, den versprechenden Morgen als den Mittag in höchster Sonnenhöhe."

"Der tiefste Grund unsres Daseins ist individuell, sowohl in Empfindungen als in Gedanken."

""Wohlan nun, laß es sein, daß unter den 50 Wörtern, die der Araber für den Löwen, unter den 200, die er für die Schlange, unter den 80, die er für den Honig, und mehr als 1000, die er fürs Schwert hat, sich feine Unterschiede finden oder gefunden hätten, die aber verlorengegangen wären"

"Der kluge Mann sucht alles zu seinem Vorteil anzuwenden."

"Der Aberglaube macht die Gottheit zum Götzen, und der Götzendiener ist um so gefährlicher, weil er ein Schwärmer ist."

"Jeder Stand, jede Lebensart hat ihre eignen Sitten."

"Die menschliche Seele hat ihre Lebensalter wie der Körper."

"Das Menschengeschlecht wird nicht vergehen, bis dass alles geschehe! Bis der Genius der Erleuchtung die Erde durchzogen!"

"Weder Krieger noch Mönche nähren ein Land."

"Vorübergehend ist also alles in der Geschichte, die Aufschrift ihres Tempels heißt: Nichtigkeit und Verwesung."

"Keine zwei Dinge konnten einander an sich fremder sein, als das römische Papsttum und der Geist deutscher Sitten."