On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
The formation and development of individual character are then shown * to depend on the feelings , opinions , and usages that have been handed down from former generations , and thus to constitute a necessary link in that vast traditional chain which connects the universal history of the species . Herder , however ,
will not , with some modern philosophers , sacrifice the individual to the species ; in other words , a reality to an abstraction . There is no point which he labours more earnestly to establish , than that the improvement of individual man is an end simultaneously accomplished by Providence with the progress of society . The education of the race he cannot distinguish from the successive education of individuals . ' There is this peculiarity , ' he observes , * in all the works of God , that , though they ail belong to an immeasurable whole , yet each is perfect in itself , and bears impressed upon it the godlike characters of its destination . It is so
with plants and brutes ; can it be otherwise with man ? Can it be that thousands should be brought into being for only one ?— - that all preceding generations should have an exclusive reference to the last ?—that every individual should exist only for the race ; that is to say , for the phantom of a mere name ? The All-wise acts not thus ; he sets forth no dreamy abstractions in his works ; in every one of his children he enjoys as full and perfect a consciousness of . his paternal love , as if that child were his only creation . All his means are ends ; all his ends are means to still
greater ends , which unfold the accomplishment of his infinite plans . Thus , what each individual man is and may become , that also must be the purpose of the species . And what is this ? The perfection and bliss of man , in the place and rank assigned him , as an appointed link in that chain of education which stretches through the whole race . Man is educated by man . His body
moulders in the grave , and his name soon becomes a mere shade upon the earth ; but his thoughts and character , long after he himself is forgotten , incorporated with that traditional heritage which passes from generation to generation , perpetuate their influence on the future destinies of his racef . '
On the instrumentality of language in developing the moral and intellectual nature of man , Herder has the following remarks . * One of the most interesting inquiries into the history and manifold characteristics of the human understanding and heart would be found in a philosophical comparison of languages ; since on each of these the mind and character of a people are strongly impressed . Not only the organs of speech vary in different regions , and almost every nation has some sounds and letters peculiar to it ; but the paming of objects , even of such as are audible , and the direct expression of the feelings in interjections , are marked by great differences over all the earth . In objects of sig ht and simple * Book IX . i ., pp . 189 , 190 . t Book IX . i ., p . 191 .
Untitled Article
Tht Philosophy of the History of Mankind .. 9 &
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 93, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/21/
-