Problems of Metaphysics

Cosmological-Theological Problem

Development in the Realm of Spiritual Historical Life

The spiritual-historical world reveals a remarkable similarity to the organic world, a fact often noted by scholars. Since the time of Plato, it has become customary to regard the state as a grand-scale representation of humanity. A. Schaeffle, in his profound and witty work "The Structure and Life of the Social Body," meticulously compares society to a natural organism. Similarly, it has become commonplace to characterize language as an organism; perhaps it would be more apt to describe it as an organic system belonging to the organism of the people. Indeed, the resemblance is striking; just as in an organic body, we encounter a vast multiplicity of heterogeneous parts that function harmoniously together to produce a cohesive and meaningful result.

Consider language. A multitude of heterogeneous elements collaborates to generate a shared output—the living discourse that, as is evident, serves as a valuable or functional result for the bearer of this organ, the people: without it, a unified spiritual life would be impossible; the life of a nation itself would be inconceivable. Thousands of words, akin to the cells comprising a corporeal organism, are connected within language to facilitate communal expression. The entirety of words divides the task of symbolizing, in sound forms, the collective wealth of thoughts and feelings of the people, where each word within this whole possesses its specific, limited task, its meaning. The organic nature of language is then manifested in the distinct elements of its form. Different types of words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) correspond to broad categories of representations; they express through their form the belonging of the denoted to objects, qualities, or phenomena. Each word, in turn, is endowed with a remarkably ingenious mechanism, through which it becomes capable of revealing its relationships to the elements with which it engages—namely, the system of minor modifications in form that we refer to as declension and conjugation. Thus, language constitutes a highly complex and yet astonishingly precise apparatus for expressing all conceivable thoughts and feelings, down to their finest nuances—an instrument of such intricacy and perfection that, in comparison, the most artificial machines appear as mere simplistic tools.

How did this organism come into being? At present, it propagates, so to speak, through parental conception: children learn the language from their parents; but how did language initially arise? Was it by chance, through one or another individual uttering some sound formation that was understood, retained, and thus became the name of a thing or phenomenon? This, clearly, is absurd. Hence, language must have arisen from intention and invention. This was the explanation provided by the rationalism of the past century, following the rationalism of ancient times. Tideman, who later became a professor in Marburg, philosophizes in his treatise on the origin of language (1772) as follows: humans initially lived in an animalistic state; this condition was inconvenient and burdensome; the desire for a better quality of life prompted connection, which in turn generated the need for a means of communication. "At first, they likely resorted to a language of gestures. However, this could not last long; they must soon have recognized the inadequacy of such a language. People noticed that emotional movements elicited sounds from them. They also observed that animals employed sounds with considerable success. What could be more natural than to attempt to derive benefit from this discovery and to use sounds as symbols for their thoughts?"

Such considerations strike us as somewhat comical—they resonate almost like a parody of enlightenment penned by romantics. Yet, this explanation, when compared to the interpretation of the organic world through the lens of cosmic reason, possesses an advantage: it still takes into account a given and known cause. Indeed, this very advantage works to its detriment; the cause is too well known for us to expect such an effect from it. How, we then ask, did the details of this invention unfold? Was there some particularly ingenious individual among the still mute people who, one fine day, sat down and invented language, much as someone today might devise Volapük? Did he quietly contrive for himself these thousands of names for things, qualities, phenomena, relationships, declensions, and conjugations, only to astonish his peers with a ready-made system, demonstrating its utility, its application, and thus persuading them to adopt and learn the language? It seems scarcely more astonishing if one were to add that this same individual also invented reason and conveyed it to others through persuasion. Therefore, did many labor together on this task? Or, as might immediately come to mind today, was a commission perhaps convened for the invention of language? Or did many work alone: one providing a dozen names or a few prepositions? And then someone invented declension, perhaps first one form, and then another, until all four or five, or however many there were, came into being? Encouraged by this success, someone else might have then conceived of conjugation and produced the active voice, another adding the passive voice, while yet a third invented the subjunctive mood? For the Greek language, some particularly clever mind might have conceived of the optative mood, while some obstinate individual took it upon themselves to include irregular verbs? In this vein, Tideman further elaborates the matter, only to ultimately dismiss the principle of invention, surrendering the matter to necessity and chance.

Clearly, we stand before the same dilemma as before: did language arise by chance or through systematic invention? There seems to be no third option, and yet neither of these scenarios is entirely conceivable.

Linguistics first confronted this difficulty, following the same path that biology later took. The source of the desperate dilemma was the notion that languages, like species of animals, are immutable, static entities. Grammarians have hitherto approached the subject in this manner: language is an unchanging, permanently prepared tool that grammar describes and instructs in its use. The historical perspective, which emerged around the turn of the eighteenth century across various fields (under the influence of a massive and universal backlash against the petrified rationalism of the Enlightenment), paved the way for linguistics through figures like W. von Humboldt, Bopp, and the Brothers Grimm, entirely dispelling the old notion of the essence of language. This led to the realization that language is not a ready-made instrument, inherited from generation to generation, but a function that is constantly being recreated; using Humboldt's expression—it is not epyon but everpyeia. Thus, contemporary linguistics regards language as a function that continually alters its form along with the life of the people, and in its current form, as the result of millennia of development, while also representing a starting point for new formations. Evidently, we encounter here precisely the same concept that modern biology applies to animal and plant forms.

However, linguistics boasts the immense advantage that the process of development, or at least part of it, is indeed visible before its eyes; the transformation of historical organisms occurs more swiftly than that of physical organisms. We know the form that the German language possessed five hundred or a thousand years ago; in Gothic, we possess a form that is even half a millennium older. Written monuments present us with what might be considered the fossils of ancient forms of language, and moreover, these fossils are of incomparably greater sophistication than those available to the biologist in paleontological remnants: here, there are merely a few disconnected fragments, sometimes only traces of previous life forms; yet there, although not a complete life (sound and accent can only be approximated), there exists a relatively far more complete depiction of the structure and function of language. Similarly, the evolution of the Latin language unfolds before us over a span of more than two thousand years. Furthermore, we see how the process of creating new languages transpires before our very eyes: the French, Italian, and Spanish languages are the offspring of a single parent, which, however, has also preserved itself alongside them as the language of the church and the scholarly world. Finally, comparative linguistics goes even further: it undertakes the task of presenting nearly all the languages currently spoken or once spoken in Europe, along with the languages of the Persians and Indians, as historical transformations of a common proto-language of the Aryan peoples.

Here we find, therefore, what is still lacking in the critiques of Darwinism within the realm of biology: the formation of new species, between which no further fruitful crossbreeding occurs. The Latin and French or Spanish languages, not to mention Greek, Polish, or German, are not mere bastardizations or dialects of a single tongue; rather, they represent distinct languages, among which no further fruitful mingling transpires, and there is no mutual understanding. How did these new species arise? We see that they are formed through the aggregation of small changes: intentional invention or transformation plays a minimal role in this process. On the contrary, we can identify in this process precisely those principles which are considered the causes of transformation in biology. The aspiration to express thoughts and feelings through articulated sounds—or rather, to make them comprehensible to others—takes the place of a general will to life. The elements that compel change arise, on one side, from the contact and mingling with foreign languages, and on the other, from the continuous transformation within the inner world, the realm of thoughts and feelings, which is connected to the generational turnover; this entails a tendency towards variation in words and forms. Just as in the struggle for existence, the most suitable variations are subsequently selected and integrated into the common language. The essential criteria for suitability are brevity and ease of pronunciation, clarity and definiteness of expression, and finally, the strength and expressiveness of speech, which largely reside in the capacity to evoke and discharge feelings.

Thus, the development of language occurs in the sense of formal suitability, without any deliberate formation. Certainly, it is not through mechanically operating selection; at each juncture, the decision regarding the viability of a neologism is made through more or less conscious judgments of taste or reason. Yet, the cumulative development is not governed by a foresighted intention. The task of the history of any particular language is to detail the transformations of the reservoir of forms and words and to explain them from the aforementioned perspectives. In the formation of sounds and forms, physiological configurations will play a significant role; in the development of syntactic forms, the striving for clarity particularly emerges; in the establishment of vocabulary and expressions, alongside convenience and definiteness, the plastic and emotionally evocative force also holds considerable significance. From this standpoint, it becomes somewhat possible to evaluate the merits of various languages. For instance, one might generally assert that, in terms of logical perfection, the languages descended from Latin surpass their progenitor; the replacement of declension endings with prepositions, the proper use of pronouns and auxiliary verbs in conjugation, as well as the linkage of the sequence of words, all confer greater definiteness and clarity to speech. Indeed, this transformation also renders it simultaneously more rigid and arid.

By employing the same means and drawing from the same forces and tendencies that continue to define language transformation, linguistics also elucidates the original emergence of inflection, which appears to have been formed with deliberate intent and artistry. Thus, for example, one can discern how the conjugation of the Indo-European languages arose through the gradual fusion of previously independent sound formations. The inflecting language was preceded by a stage of language development that possessed only unchanging and autonomous words, known as roots. Comparative grammar teaches us to recognize in personal endings a condensed and distorted personal pronoun that has become an unintegrated suffix. In Greek conjugation, the original form is still quite discernible; the first-person ending μι is the pronoun as it exists in the oblique cases; similarly, σι for the second and τι for the third person. The matter is even clearer in Sanskrit. As the pronoun root and verb root combined in rapid speech, thanks to accentuation, into a single sound formation, and the voiceless suffix was increasingly abbreviated, inflection thus emerged.

Finally, linguistics dares to approach the ultimate problem posed by organization: the problem of generatio aequivoca, the emergence of the organic from the inorganic. In this realm, it takes the form of the question: how did the original roots arise, those first articulated sound formations through which the primitive, still non-inflecting language possessed names for things and phenomena? Let us posit that history leaves us here; it never reaches the nascent forms. However, under the guidance of biology, with the assistance of physiology and psychology, we may attempt to elucidate this phenomenon in schematic construction. The initial point of departure for sound symbolism, which achieves its highest development in language, appears for biology to be the reflexive sound; all strong internal excitements involuntarily accompany diverse sounds. We observe this already in the animal world; together with movement and gesture, the sound produced by the excitation of respiration manifests as an accompanying phenomenon of internal processes; pain, pleasure, desire, fear provoke sounds of various degrees. The reflexive sound, awakening sympathetic feelings in fellow members of the species, inadvertently becomes a bearer of communication. Yet even as an intentionally employed means to convey understanding, sound already appears in the animal world; a dog possesses a whole range of sounds; bark, yelp, growl, howl—each with its own scale, which it employs, particularly in interactions with humans, with a certain intentionality to express its internal states.

If we assume this form of sound symbolism to also characterize human behavior, then the task would be to produce from this, as it were, still non-organic matter of sound an organized language. What primarily distinguishes human language from this proposed primitive form is, above all, two things: the articulateness of sounds and the use of sound formations as symbols for objects. By this very fact, the proposed primitive form of language, consisting solely of the juxtaposition of unchanging sound formations, would clearly be differentiated from any animal language. Animal language—if it may be so termed—lacks articulateness, and its sounds bear no objective meaning; that is to say, they constitute accompanying phenomena and symbols for subjective excitements of will and feeling, but they are not names for things and phenomena. We find human language where articulated sound formations are employed as names for things or phenomena; a sigh or cry does not belong to language. Nor is the moment of subjective excitement alien to language; it manifests in tone and stress, but the word, as such—where the root itself is a word—serves as a sign for a specific content of representation. Accordingly, the task of linguistics could also be described thus: to delineate the origin of the language of representations in articulated sound formations from the inarticulate language of will.

The general conditions for addressing this task, which, it is likely, will never be entirely resolved, must be provided by physiology and psychology. The former will indicate that, thanks to the upright posture of the body, humans have acquired greater freedom of movement in the thoracic cavity, thereby achieving the possibility for finer nuances and articulation of sound; that further, through the refinement of the hands, they have liberated themselves from the excessive demands placed on the mouth, which in animals often serves as an organ for grasping. Psychology will point to the fact that communal life, particularly conditioned by an extraordinarily prolonged youth, must have become especially close among humans, and that this serves as the foundation for the strong impulse to communicate that distinguishes humanity; it will further indicate the development of intellectual life, which found encouraging circumstances in the diversity of activities made possible by the hands and in the vibrancy of social relationships. A greater richness of segmented representations and an increased need for communication can thus be regarded as continually active incentives for a more nuanced and richer development of sound symbolism.

How the development occurred in specifics—how in the language of the Aryans the root da became a name for giving, sta for standing, reg for straightening and making straight, how plu acquired a relation to water, while luk related to light—this question will never receive any answer other than a reference to possibilities. Perhaps we will find ourselves repeatedly compelled to revert to the old means of escape: to derive the primary signifying sounds from the tones produced by phenomena and things themselves; for even now—primarily in the early stages of life—the sound heard provokes a mimicry through language, as if responding to a call. In this context, human activities and the sounds they produce or that accompany them, particularly when performed collectively, could, as has recently been noted, provide the first impetus for the emergence of root words. If the act of giving was initially accompanied by a reflexive exclamation of da, as can still be observed in children, it becomes understandable how this sound could evolve into a properly used and comprehended sound every time it signaled an urge to evoke in another the idea of giving and receiving. It is evident that for a more precise interpretation of the implied meaning, bodily movements and gestures played a significant role. Similarly, in plu, which also underlies the German words fliessen (to flow) and Fluss (river), we can still hear the sound produced by water when a stone is thrown into it or when it moves swiftly. From such initial formations, root formation could later extend to phenomena that do not themselves produce sounds, where a certain sensory homogeneity of the impression could foster the creation of sound combinations. The word blitzen (to flash) indeed possesses an onomatopoeic quality for us; it could not be replaced by krachen (to crack). Likewise, Licht (light) cannot be substituted by Dunkel (darkness), nor can Liebe (love) and Lust (pleasure) be replaced by Grimm (anger) and Gram (grief) without offending our onomatopoeic sensibilities. From such primary roots, through the process of differentiated articulation following the differentiation of an originally very vague meaning, secondary roots could later emerge; from the root mar or mir, which perhaps conveyed the sound of rubbing bodies, meaning to rub or grind, one might derive mahl (the root from which the term for mill is derived in European languages) and marj (to wipe or clean), thus from a single primary root could arise an infinite array of derivatives.

In any case, there will always be a free field for speculation and conjecture here, which in the end is not such a misfortune; for if we all knew with absolute certainty, who would then desire to be a linguist? At any rate, it can be said that we see how even the earliest germs of language could arise without systematic invention and composition, almost by a certain kind of generatio aequivoca. Intentional invention played but a negligible role in this process. Similarly, further formation occurred as the world of representations developed and relatively detached from the will; at the same pace, its sound phenomena—language—grew alongside it—not through conscious and deliberate action. Only at a high stage of spiritual development does reflection upon language arise; and with this comes a tendency toward arbitrary interference in its evolution—though more in the sense of preservation than progress; for grammar is conservative, standing against the natural inclination to variation.

The very same educational law governing the development of language prevails over all spiritual-historical life; all its formations arise through a certain kind of spontaneous growth, rather than through systematic invention. Let us take the practical realm, the development of morals, law, and the state. Moral laws are not invented by moralists, just as logical laws are not concocted or prescribed by logicians, nor grammatical laws by grammarians. Morals represent universal forms of action, having their primary form in the stereotypical reactions of animal instincts; as they reach consciousness in humans, conscience emerges, which then evolves alongside the very life of the spirit. The philosophy of morals develops, explains, and justifies moral laws, but it does not invent them. The same holds true for law: it is not an invention of jurists or legislators but grows alongside the collective life of the people, as the external form of their social existence. Initially forming part of custom, it separates at a certain stage of development from the sum of obligatory forms of life and activity, establishing itself as the domain of social coercion. From this point onward, it naturally becomes a subject of conscious processing; alongside unwritten law arises written law, and ultimately, in extensive general comparisons or codifications, law appears as something constructed. Those who view the matter historically will still see that even here, the act of making does not concern the substance of law or its establishment in totality; the essence of the matter always involves merely the systematic incorporation of what already exists and is traditional, with occasional minor adaptations to the changing life conditions of the people. The same applies to legal institutions as it does to governmental institutions (which are, however, only one part of the legal framework); namely, that they are not made but rather grow. The same is true of the state in general; it is not, as the rationalism of the last century perceived it, an invention contrived for specific purposes, introduced one fine day by voting and decree, but is a form of life that has evolved among the people, whose primary form can be observed in the grouping of humans that corresponds to an animal herd. Here we at least glimpse the final remnants of the developmental process sufficiently to discern how little the existing form of our state appears to be the result of systematic invention. Reason and deliberation acted everywhere in the transformation, but only in the sense that they sought to adapt the existing to new needs and perspectives. In the end, even in this, dark instincts often played a larger role than the reflective intellect.

Even in the theoretical domain, within the very realm of reason, where intention and invention ought to play the most significant role, matters stand almost in the same position; even sciences are not invented and executed according to a plan, but arise through growth. Their primary embryonic form is mythological cosmogony, the first crude outline of a unified worldview. From this, philosophy develops, and philosophy gradually produces distinct sciences as its members. All this unified development is not invented or preordained by human reason, just as an architect sketches a work to be executed by thousands of hands over decades; this germ of knowledge develops with a certain kind of inner necessity. Of course, it is not outside reason but within the minds of individual individuals, yet in such a way that none of these latter surveys the whole or the path of development. An individual researcher or thinker works in the dark, as it were: they do not see how their work is integrated into the overall development, at least in the forward direction; in new minds, it may give rise to new tasks, new thoughts, but they themselves do not know what kind these will be. In the history of human thought, it is a most ordinary everyday fact that some thought excites in other minds entirely different thoughts than those intended by its creator. What an individual can do is to assimilate as much as possible the already existing thoughts and make them fruitful for understanding reality; whether their work will be utilized by successors and how it will be utilized remains dark to them. It may even be said that the less one thinks of others, of contemporaries, of the future, and the more one focuses solely on the task at hand, the more fruitful their work will be. It can also be stated that the greater and more fruitful the thoughts, the less they emerge as systematic inventions. Newton did not set out to invent the law of gravitation, nor did Darwin aim for a theory of evolution, nor Schopenhauer for a volitional psychology and metaphysics. Great thoughts arise through a certain kind of spiritual conception, not through artisanal invention. When their time comes, they arrive as if by themselves. Their testing and development occur thereafter, of course, through systematic work. Here, the same occurs as with any work of art or poetry: the latter too is not prepared according to a plan, but rather grows from within through the development of the germ. Paltry manufactured works are prepared according to a plan; only here is there a general intention to create something; then the search for content and form begins. Thus, imitations arise, sprouting like mushrooms from the ground, every time a certain work attracts universal attention and becomes fashionable—manufactured products, not works of art. So too do manufactured products emerge in science: the exhibit works of dissertation factories, the cumbersome creations of commentators summarizing and rounding out the educational constructions of registrars of science; and they also begin with a general intention to produce something that will confer favorable notoriety upon the author; then begins the pursuit of free material, and once it is happily found, systematic processing according to a scheme commences. In contrast, great thoughts that open new paths to knowledge are not made or invented; they arise as if by inspiration.

Just as the highest activity of the intellect does not manifest in the form of systematic and deliberate action, so too is the intellect itself not the result of planned effort in its origin. Reason is not crafted; it emerges. The process did not unfold such that an individual among those still devoid of reason, upon recognizing the utility of a thing, contrived the processes of deduction and inference, concepts and judgments. Rather, all of this occurred through gradual growth, as a natural spiritual product. The primary form of reason can be observed in instinct, that remarkable capacity to pre-perceive what does not yet exist as if it did, and to activate it as a motivating force. As the connections of stereotypical reactions weaken and agile reflection begins to weave through the individual members of a sequence, reason gradually arises from instinct. The final result appears as a goal, and activity as a means; thus, we encounter, in its most primitive form, the understanding of cause and effect.

Consequently, the following holds true for all aspects of spiritual-historical life: the necessary and the purposeful are not shaped by a prescient intellect according to intentions and plans; rather, they emerge gradually, akin to the forms of organic life, through spontaneous growth. What is valid for individual organs and productions is equally true for the very essence of historical life. A people experiences a singular life; every historical representation, whether it is aware of it or not, presents this as a unity. By segmenting the course of history into periods, it introduces the idea of organic unity into the narrative. At all times, a comparison between the life of a people and that of an individual has suggested itself: the great stages—childhood, youth, maturity, old age—are repeated here; conversely, one could also assert that the fundamental law of the development of national life is echoed in individual existence. A nation does not invent its own life only to execute it according to a plan; rather, it unfolds gradually, unconsciously for itself. Only the historian, glancing back, perceives its unity and harmony.

The same occurs in individual life. A person does not concoct the course of their life. Certainly, in youth, one believes that a goal must be set, a plan devised, and then life can be transformed according to this plan and exert influence upon the world. Youth is rationalistic in its outlook; it believes in ideas and their power to transform reality; all revolutions have emerged from the young. In old age, however, thought becomes historical: one sees how little one has actively shaped their own life, how the latter has been formed under the influences of the surrounding environment, fate, and certain initially insignificant, seemingly random occurrences. Above all, the historically inherited content of life increasingly comes to the forefront. The youth believes that the world begins with them, that they must recreate it from their own mind; the longer one lives, the more one notices how trivial the distance traveled from that initial point, to which the youth once turned their back with vigor and grand plans.

Now, to summarize: intentional action and preparation according to plans play, in spiritual-historical life, a notably minor role. The same law of formation prevails in both the physical and spiritual realms; organic formations in nature and history arise not through premeditating reason but through spontaneous development from embryonic beginnings. The primary category of reality is growth, not making; even the works of the human spirit, in general, reveal a form of unintentional origin; deliberate action comprises merely a small secondary form of origin.