Historians From Germany

"Mischievous and ill-disposed lads are very inconvenient, but not more than inconvenient, in the household as in commonwealth."

"He so far surpassed his predecessors, in vision and approach, that he still largely dominates Roman studies; almost every subject begins with him, and citations of his works continue unabated. His life was indeed a watershed in our field."

"Mommsen's literary skill reached its apogee in his delineation of the characters of the late Republic. Caesar is the hero, Pompeius and Cicero misguided opponents of destiny's favorite. The strong man who gathered all the threads of power into his own hands, who undertook the spiritual, moral, military, and political rebirth was Mommsen's ideal. Some might say that he foresaw Bismarck; but of Bismarck he later disapproved."

"Mommsen, the indisputable Meister of Roman history, unrivalled in his own day and today."

"It is not too much to say that Mommsen has no notion whatever of right and wrong. It is not so much that he applauds wrong actions, as that he does not seem to know that right and wrong have anything to do with the matter. No one has set forth more clearly than Mommsen the various stages of the process by which Rome gradually reduced the states round the Mediterranean to a state of dependence—what he, by one of the quasi-technicalities of which we complain, calls a state of clientship. It is, for clear insight into the matter, one of the best parts of the book. But almost every page is disfigured by the writer's unblushing idolatry of mere force. He cannot understand that a small state can have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be anything but a fool."

"Theodor Mommsen, 1817–1903, is the towering figure among scholars of classical antiquity in the nineteenth century. In Germany today, ancient historians, classical philologists, archaeologists, and exponents of the neighbouring sciences are organized in the Mommsen-Gesellschaft."

"To explain Rome's rise under the Republic the great Theodor Mommsen in the nineteenth century originated a concept of defensive imperialism (an empire dragged ever outwards as it reacts to threat after threat) shading off into a search for natural, defensible boundaries. This concept proved highly agreeable to a colonial world and found influential proponents in the early twentieth century in Frank and Holleaux. It could confidently be wheeled out as late as the early 1970s. In his book War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 BC (Oxford, 1979) W.V. Harris effectively demolished, at least for our post-colonial age, the idea of defensive imperialism. Instead he replaced it with the concept of Rome as an aggressive polity; driven to foreign wars, and thus often to expansion, by the conscious desire of individual senators (the élite of élites) for military glory and financial gain."

"When apparently the last eminent guest had long ago taken his place, again those three bugle-blasts rang out, and once more the swords leaped from their scabbards. Who might this late comer be? Nobody was interested to inquire. Still, indolent eyes were turned toward the distant entrance, and we saw the silken gleam and the lifted sword of a guard of honor plowing through the remote crowds. Then we saw that end of the house rising to its feet; saw it rise abreast the advancing guard all along like a wave. This supreme honor had been offered to no one before. There was an excited whisper at our table—'MOMMSEN!'—and the whole house rose. Rose and shouted and stamped and clapped and banged the beer mugs. Just simply a storm! Then the little man with his long hair and Emersonian face edged his way past us and took his seat. I could have touched him with my hand—Mommsen!—think of it! ... I would have walked a great many miles to get a sight of him, and here he was, without trouble or tramp or cost of any kind. Here he was clothed in a titanic deceptive modesty which made him look like other men."

"Hours of research can cut months of field work."

"Historical research is my drug of choice."

"I've found it! I've found the Hunley. (Best selling author Nancy Roberts writes: Filled with excitement, and a certain lack of caution, Spence shot up to the surface, shouting to the men in the boat, 'I've found it! I've found the Hunley. The location of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley (first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship) had been a mystery for over one hundred years. In 1978, the Hunley was placed on the United States National Register of Historic Places as a result of Spence's discovery. The wreck was raised in 2000. Her crew was still inside.)"

"When we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the Dorians. Having stayed behind in the extreme north, they were unable to participate in the progressive civilization of the tribes which went further south..."

"Der euch gewappnet und gewehrt, Bedenkt, die ihr ihm naht: Es stuetzt der Friede sich auf`s Schwert, im Schweigen waechst die Tat."

"The Jews form a state, and, obeying their own laws, they evade those of their host country. The Jews always consider an oath regarding a Christian not binding. During the Campaign of 1812 the Jews were spies, they were paid by both sides, they betrayed both sides."

"We may add that the Poland of the fifteenth century was one of the most civilised states of Europe."

"Helmuth von Moltke was born in 1800, technically the last year of the 18th century. [...] There's a wonderful irony here: Moltke's nickname was 'der große Schweiger' (the great silent one), because he had a reputation for speaking very little; and yet, of all the hundreds of millions of people born in the 18th century, his is the only voice we can hear today."

"The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: "I have never had a plan of operations." Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."

"Der ewige Friede ist ein Traum, und nicht einmal ein schöner, und der Krieg ist ein Glied in Gottes Weltordnung. In ihm entfalten sich die edelsten Tugenden des Menschen, Mut und Entsagung, Pflichttreue und Opferwilligkeit mit Einsetzung des Lebens. Ohne den Krieg würde die Welt im Materialismus versumpfen."

"Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline. It is the translation of knowledge to practical life, the improvement of the original leading thought in accordance with continually changing situations."

"If history is to teach us anything, it must teach us that there is a continuity which binds together the present and the past, the East and the West. And no branch of history teaches that lesson more powerfully than the history of language and the history of religion."

"Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ... I say the New Testament, after that, I should place the Koran, which in its moral teachings, is hardly more than a later edition of the New Testament. Then would follow according to my opinion the Old Testament, the Southern Buddhist Tripitaka, the Tao-te-king of Laotze, the Kings of Confucius, the Veda and the Avesta."

"Thus we may infer that the only characteristic difference between modern Christianity and the old heathen faiths is the belief of the former in a personal devil and in hell. "The Aryan nations had no devil," says Max Muller. "Pluto, though of a sombre character, was a very respectable personage; and Loki (the Scandinavian), though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German Goddess, Hell, too, like Proserpine, had once seen better days. Thus, when the Germans were indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Seth, Satan or Diabolus, they treated him in the most good-humored way.""

"In 1891, at a meeting of the Established Presbytery of Glasgow, the Minister of Ladywell moved a motion that Müller’s teaching was ‘subversive of the Christian faith, and fitted to spread pantheistic and infidel views amongst the students and others’ and questioned Müller’s appointment as lecturer. Monsignor Alexander Munro in St Andrew’s Cathedral declared that Müller’s lectures ‘were nothing less than a crusade against Divine revelation, against Jesus Christ, and against Christianity’. The blasphemous lectures were, he continued, ‘the proclamation of atheism under the guise of pantheism’ and ‘uprooted our idea of God, for it repudiated the idea of a personal God’."

"Even well after Adam was no longer in the picture, there was a very cool reception in some circles to the "late Prof. Max Muller [who had] blurted forth to a not over-grateful world the news that we and our revolted sepoys were of the same human family""

"Max Müller is a Vedantist of Vedantists. He has, indeed, caught the real soul of the melody of the Vedanta, in the midst of all its settings of harmonies and discords — the one light that lightens the sects and creeds of the world, the Vedanta, the one principle of which all religions are only applications."

"One might think this position would have endeared Max Muller to missionaries, but in fact it did not. Rather, they found him entirely too sympathetic to the "heathen" and suspected him of being insufficiently committed to the faith. Accordingly, in 1860 he was passed over for Oxford's Boden chair in Sanskrit, which carried responsibility for preparing the Sanskrit-English dictionary, both of which were intended, under the terms of Lt-Col Boden's will, to advance the conversion of Indians to Christianity, not to foster English understanding or respect for India."

"Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort the original text of the Vedas from the Brâhmans, and yet boasts that European Orientalists have it. That Europe has the complete text is exceedingly doubtful... (p. 6) The late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India... When told that Professor Max Müller had declared to the audiences of his Lectures that the theory “that there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, finds but few supporters at present” — the holy and learned man laughed. His answer was suggestive. “If Mr. ‘Moksh Mooller’ [as he pronounced the name], were a Brâhman, and came with me, I might take him to a gupa cave [a secret crypt] near Okhee Math, in the Himâlayas, where he would soon find out that what crossed the Kâlapani [the black waters of the ocean] from India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books."

"We think we can see how it is that Professor Muller confesses that "now and then . . . one imagines one sees certain periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again." (Max Muller: "Popol-Vuh," p. 327). May it not be barely possible that this chaos is intensified by the fact that most of the scientists, directing the whole of their attention to history, skip that which they treat as "vague, contradictory, miraculous, absurd." Notwithstanding the feeling that there was "a groundwork of noble conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of fantastic nonsense," Professor Muller cannot help comparing this nonsense to the tales of the Arabian Nights. Far be from us the ridiculous pretension of criticising a scientist so worthy of admiration for his learning as Max Muller. But we cannot help saying that even among the fantastic nonsense of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments anything would be worthy of attention, if it should help toward the evolving of some historical truth. Homer's Odyssey surpasses in fantastic nonsense all the tales of the Arabian Nights combined; and notwithstanding that, many of his myths are now proved to be something else besides the creation of the old poet's fancy."

"It is useless to expect scientists to find in these works anything of interest except that which is in direct relation to either philology or comparative mythology. Even Max Muller, as soon as he refers to the mysticism and metaphysical philosophy scattered through the old Sanscrit literature, sees in it naught but "theological absurdities" and "fantastic nonsense.""

"The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed- and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault it be?"

"These two sciences. the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot. at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; and many misunderstandings, many controversies, would have been avoided. if scholars had not attempted to draw conclusions from language to blood, or from blood to language. When each of these sciences shall have carried out independently its own classification of men and languages, then, and then only, will it be time to compare their results; but even then, I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.(61)"

"If I live for one purpose it is for this, that I will preach the union of Eastern and Western philosophy, the reconciliation of Europe and Asia. The idea may seem absurd to many in the present age. It may provoke ridicule and angry reviling. But posterity will prove a better judge."

"None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone, In regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman."

"As for more than twenty years my principal work has been devoted to the ancient literature of India, I cannot but feel a deep and real sympathy for all that concerns the higher interests of the people of that country. Though I have never been in India, I have many friends there, both among the civilians and among the natives, and I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that the publication in England of the ancient sacred writings of the Brahmans, which had never been published in India, and other contributions from different European scholars towards a better knowledge of the ancient literature and religion of India, have not been without some effect on the intellectual and religious movement that is going on among the more thoughtful members of Indian society. I have sometimes regretted that I am not an Englishman, and able to help more actively in the great work of educating and improving the natives. But I do rejoice that this great task of governing and benefiting India should have fallen to one who knows the greatness of that task and all its opportunities and responsibilities, who thinks not only of its political and financial bearings, but has a heart to feel for the moral welfare of those millions of human beings that are, more or less directly, committed to his charge. India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if the funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough. The results of the educational work carried on during the last twenty years are palpable everywhere. They are good and bad, as was to be expected. It is easy to find fault with what is called Young Bengal, the product of English ideas grafted on the native mind. But Young Bengal, with all its faults, is full of promise. Its bad features are apparent everywhere, its good qualities are naturally hidden from the eyes of careless observers. . . . India can never be anglicized, but it can be reinvigorated. By encouraging a study of their own ancient literature, as part of their education, a national feeling of pride and self-respect will be reawakened among those who influence the large masses of the people. A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with Western ideas, yet retaining its native spirit and character. The two things hang together. In order to raise the character of the vernaculars, a study of the ancient classical language is absolutely necessary: for from it these modern dialects have branched off, and from it alone can they draw their vital strength and beauty. A new national literature will bring with it a new national life and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed — and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?"

"Whatever may be the date of the Vedic hymns , whether 1500 or 15,000 B.C. , they have their own unique place and stand by themselves in the literature of the world " ."

"Max Müller explained that his conjectural chronology of the Rigveda was only a terminus ad quem adding “we should not forget that this is a constructive date only and that such a date does not become positive by mere repetition” (1916: 34)."

"He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu."

"History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity. All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance. The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life.... The religion of Buddha has spread far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, and to our limited vision, it may seem to have retarded the advent of Christianity among a large portion of the human race. But in the sight of Him with whom a thousand years are but as one day, that religion, like the ancient religions of the world, may have but served to prepare the way of Christ, by helping through its very errors to strengthen and to deepen the ineradicable yearning of the human heart after the truth of God."

"India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education."

"The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years."

"How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed (Referring to the seed planted by Jesus and his Apostles) and tell them what Christianity was meant to be? unless he may show that, like all other religions, Christianity too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the middle ages, and that the Christianity of the middle ages was not that of the early Councils; that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and that what has been said by Christ, that alone was well said?"

"There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts. the Germans, the Slavonians. the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and the Hindus. were living together beneath the same roof. separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.... The Aryan nations who pursued a north- westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of north*western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature. and works of art the element of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history. and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation. commerce, and religion. ... But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path. the southern tribes were slowly migrating toward the mountains which gird the north of India.... Left to themselves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also. Old dynasties were destroyed. whole f.uni.lies annihilated. and new empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf arter a shower of rain has passed over it; its character remained the same, passive, meditative, quiet, and thoughtful."

"Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger continents . . . and if it had not been for a happy accident, which like an electric spark, caused the floating elements to crystallise into regular forms, it is more doubtful whether the long list of languages and dialects could have sustained the interest of the student of languages. This electric spark was the discovery of Sanskrit."

"As sure as the six Romance dialects point to an original home of Italian shepherds on the seven hills at Rome, the Aryan languages together point to an earlier period of language, when the first ancestors of the Indians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Slaves, the Celts, and the Germans were living together within the same enclosures, nay, under the same roof. . . . Before the ancestors of the Indians and Persians started for the south, and the leaders of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic colo- nies marched towards the shores of Europe, there was a small clan of Aryans, settled probably on the highest elevation of Central Asia, speaking a language, not yet Sanskrit or Greek or German, but containing the dialectic germs of all; a clan that had advanced to a state of agricultural civilisation; that had recognised the bonds of blood, and sanctioned the bonds of marriage; and that invoked the Giver of Light and Life in heaven by the same name which you may still hear in the temples of Benares, in the basilicas of Rome, and in our own churches and cathedrals."

"As early as in 1850, he wrote to Bunsen ‘…if Wilson would write from the standpoint of a missionary, and would show how the knowledge and bringing into light of the Veda would upset the whole existing system of Indian theology, it might become of real interest’."

"India is much riper for Christianity than Rome or Greece was at the time of St. Paul. The rotten tree has for some time had artificial supports, because its fall would have been inconvenient for the Government."

"In 1859, Max Müller wrote—‘Although the Brahmans of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family, which civilized the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation. The mainstream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the northwest. No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks’."

"In April 1856, in one letter he wrote to Bunsen ‘I only recognize one chronology for India, the four literary periods of the Veda, which bring us to at least 1500 BC, and even at that time show us a formulated system of divinities and even priest-craft’. On the other hand, in the same letter, he mentions that, ‘… and before the nomadic Greeks separated from the nomadic Indians, centuries must have passed…So you see the oldest date of the name Ophir occurring in the Bible is the latest time in which the Aryans were already settled by the sea, and at the time of the Veda they had not yet settled there’. However, it should also be noted here that in a true scientific spirit, Müller was open to ideas that argued against these dates. While discussing the age of the Veda in 1891, Müller quoted Prof. Sayce, who presented some evidence that would ‘prove the presence of Sanskrit -speaking Aryans in India about at least 3000 BC’."

"[A]s in his language and in his grammar [the Indian] has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern [Indo-european] dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to differ from all the rest … no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom – whether roots, grammar, words, myths or legends."

"Muller may have well felt the need to stress that "an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan eyes and hair, and Aryan blood is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolicocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar"; after all, it was he who had been a principal cause in such misconceptions through his earlier remarks on the common blood that the "English soldier" shared with the "dark Bengali"."