الفصل الفصل 365 · 第365章

From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere

recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves

sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving

that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of

the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem

impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after

the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still

studied for a long time.

From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births

or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that

mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic

conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce

migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built

were destroyed in their essence.

By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been

retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue

studying historic events as the results of man’s free will. For if a

certain mode of government was established or certain migrations

of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic,

ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those

individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government

or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause.

And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the

laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology,

and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.

The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly

fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the

old views and accused the new of violating revelation. But when truth

conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new

foundation.

Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between

the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way

stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting

revelation.

In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes

passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret for

the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other

is the passion for destruction.

To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy,

it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in

God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the

son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to

Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed

religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against

religion.

Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of

inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil,

and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on

those conceptions.

So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of

inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though

the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in

astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which

the institutions of state and church are erected.

As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history

now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or

nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible

phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history

it is the independence of personality—free will.

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth

lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and of

the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing

the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause

lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s own

personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: “It is true that we

do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility

we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not

feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is

true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our

free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on

the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an

unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel;

in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom

that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not

conscious.