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    Al £ T . IT .

    * It may be laid down as an universal axiom , that the portion of literature , which addresses itself to the people , must have a popular spirit and character , or it will be a mere classical airbubble : nor can it be otherwise , than that , in communities , where there is no people , there can be no public and no nation —• no language and poetry—that is properly our own and has a living agency in our hearts . We can then write only for chamber-students and fastidious critics , who , take upon them to re-cast what we have written—and under whose dictation we fabricate all

    kinds of verse , odes , romances , epic poems and songs , which no one understands , or feels ^ or cares for . A literature , which is fashioned after classical models , is like the bird of paradise , graceful and gay—ever on the wing and always soaring—but never setting foot on our native soil * . ' This extract , from an Essay of Herder ' s on the similarity of the earlier German and English poetry , exhibits his taste in literature ; but it may equally well serve as a key to the principles of his philosophy .

    In every varied form of society , his object was to seize the popular spirit—the national character ; from that point of view to survey and estimate its laws , institutions , manners and literature ; and so , instead of framing d priori an abstract theory of what human nature must be , and ought to be , to proceed , after a copious induction of facts , and a comparison of the various aspects of society in different ages and countries , and at different

    grades of civilization , to the recognition of those laws and tendencies which are universally distinctive of the race . The diversities observable in mankind , Herder traces not to an original distinction of species , but to the influence of climate operating so constantly and so powerfully on the organization , as in time to create differences , which are transmissible by generation , and become the permanent characters of races . According to him , there are two agencies concerned in determining the make and constitution of each individual—the generative power , which is co-extensive with the species , and derived from their common origin ^; and the influence of climate which modifies the operation of this inherent power . ' Climate , ' he observes ? , is a chaos of causes operating irregularly , variously , and slowly , till a £ last they penetrate into the interior of the system , and , fixed in a constitutional habitude , affect even the birth

    * Aehnlichkeit der Mittlern . Engiia f hen und Deutsd ^ en Dicjitkunst . Werke Band . xxii . b . 57 . f Die genetische Kraft ist die Mutter alter Bildungen auf der Er < le , vii . 4 , 91 . 1 Ibid . 5 , 105 . * 'F

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    86

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    HERDER'S THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HISTORY OF MANKIND ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 86, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/14/