Herder and Francis Bacon

H. B. Nisbet

The Modern Language Review, Vol. 62, No. 2. (Apr., 1967), pp. 267-283.

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HERDER AND FRANCIS BACON

The links between Herder, who is usually portrayed in the first place as a restless adversary of rationalism and progenitor of the Storm and Stress movement in German literature, and Francis Bacon, the renowned empiricist and sober reasoner whose ideas were put into practice by the Royal Society, would at first seem remote. But it is particularly important that the very real affinities between the two should no longer be overlooked, because if it can be shown that they do indeed exist, and that they are not after all difficult to discover, we are at once led to question and revaluate some of the traditional notions about Herder. For it is precisely the traditional conception of Herder as an 'irrationalist', one who revolted against the Age of Reason and who deplored the effects of science upon modern civilization, that has led critics to ignore or overlook the great influence which, throughout Herder's life, Francis Bacon had upon him.

Suphan's index to the standard edition of Herder's works gives an inadequate indication of Herder's debt to Bacon. The index lists by no means all of Herder's references to the English philosopher; in fact, from I 764 onwards, Herder refers to him explicitly in his works and correspondence on upwards of eighty separate occasions, and echoes his ideas and words countless other times. Moreover, lengthy extracts from Bacon's .hrovum organum and De augmentis scientiarum also survive among Herder's unpublished MSSS1 And while most of the references in his published writings are to these two works, he frequently refers also to the New Atlantis, De ~apientia aeterum, and Essays ('Sermonesjdeles'), indicating in one remark that he had read at least some of Bacon's writings both in English and in German2 (as well, of course, as in Latin). On several occasions, he incorporates whole pages, translated from Bacon, in his own works. And finally, in the I 780's, he planned to publish a German or Latin edition of the De augmentis and failed to do so only because he was forestalled in both cases by other editors3

I t can be demonstrated with tolerable certainty that Herder's enthusiasm for Bacon was first aroused, around 1764, by Hamann (although Kant no doubt also mentioned him in the lectures which Herder then attended in Konigsberg). Hamann himself had only recently become interested in Bacon, in fact in 1759, a few years before he met Herder.4 He mentions him nine times in his Aesthetica in nuce ( I 762), the work of his which Herder quotes more frequently than any other. Indeed, in a footnote to his famous dictum 'Poesie ist die Muttersprache des Menschengeschlechts',5 Hamann refers explicitly to a similar statement in Bacon's De augmentis; but when we find Herder quoting Hamann's words and mentioning the source in Bacon all in one sentence (SMTxvr, 19), and, on another occasion,

1 Stiftunp. Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Depot der Staatshibliothek, Tubingen. Herder-Nachla5, Kapsel xx< Nr. 69-75.

2 Herders Sammtliche Werke, herausgegeben von Bernhard Suphan, 33 Bde. (Berlin 1877-1913), VIII, 320; referred to in the text as 'SW'. References to works of other authors are preceded by 'Hamann', 'Bacon', etc.

3 'Aus Herders Briefwechsel', ed. H . Gelzer, Protestantische Monatsblatter, 14(1859), 120. (Herder to Georg Muller, 30 December 1787.)

4 See R. Unger, Hamann und die Aufklamng, 2. AuA. (Halle/Saale, 1g25), note to p. 509. 5 Hamanns Werke, herausgegeben von Josef Nadler, 6 Bde. (Wien, 1g49-57), 11, 197.

Herder and Francis Bacon

quoting Hamann together with a further passage from Bacon which also appears in Hamann's Aesthetics (SW XXII, 121-2; cf. Hamann 11, 207), it becomes obvious that the two writers were associated in Herder's mind, and lends support to our contention that Bacon's ideas first reached him through Hamann.

Like Hamann, the young Herder found certain of Bacon's ideas on language and poetry congenial. Both thinkers were attracted by his empiricism, finding it akin to their own belief in the concrete world, in the world of the senses, which they exalted in opposition to the abstractions of German Enlightenment philosophy. Herder, for example, several times quotes Bacon in support of his conviction that words, particularly abstract terms, may mislead us into accepting traditional prejudices (cf. Bacon's idola) which have become enshrined in our language and which we have failed to test against observable nature;l for thought should be the master, not the slave of expression. Like Bacon, Herder also contended that language reflects national character, and, in 1785, he reiterates Bacon's appeal for an 'allgemeine Physiognomik der Volker aus ihren Sprachen' (SW XIII, 364; cf. Bacon IV, 442). Bacon, again like Herder, had advocated borrowing from other languages in order to enrich our own, but warned on the other hand against over-literal imitation, for example of ancient verse-forms (Bacon IV, 444). I-Iis following words are in fact closely similar in their tone to that of Herder's early Fragmente, although Herder is more insistent upon the dangers of incautious borrowing : For not only may languages be enriched by mutual exchanges, but the several beauties of each may be combined. . . into a most beautiful image . . .And at the same time there will be attained . . . signs of no slight value . . . concerning the dispositions and manners of peoples and nations, drawn from their languages. (Bacon IV, 441-2)

Both therefore believed that every language is relative to a historical and cultural context, and that all language tends to become misleading or meaningless when divorced from empirical reality.

Bacon had maintained that 'as hieroglyphics came before letters, so parables came before arguments' (Bacon III, 698). This was the passage which Hamann cited in support of his idea that poetry emerged before prose, and Herder, of course, adopted this notion in his Fragmente. And although Bacon, unlike Herder, had little sense for lyrical poetry, and preferred allegorical and didactic poems above all others, further general reflections of his concerning poetry are akin to ideas of Herder. But when Herder, again in the Fragmente, renews Hamann's wish that a 'new mythology' will replace the outworn rococo conventions borrowed from classical mythology, and recommends either that a new imagery should be bor- rowed from natural history and science (e.g. SW I, 434 and 448) or that the ancient myths should be given a new 'geistigern Sinn' (SW I, 448), he disagrees with Bacon, who, in his De sapientia veterum, had read a political significance into many ancient myths. Presumably he disagreed because he believed that poetry should express primarily the poet's emotions rather than any practical or moral doctrines. On the other hand, Bacon, in the work just named, had interpreted many other ancient myths in terms of natural phenomena, just as Herder later elabora-

1 SW I, 415 (1767), v, 153 (1770), xxr, 42 (1799); cf. also W0rk.r ofFrancis Bacon, edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, 14 vols. (1857-74), IV, 55 and 61 (references to vols. IV and v are to the editors' translations of Bacon's Latin philosophical works).

H. B. NISBET 269

ted the similar conception of a new poetic imagery borrowed from science and the natural world (e.g. SW 111, 261-2).

In 1781, Herder quotes a long extract from Bacon on poetry (SW XI, 81-2; cf. Bacon IV, 315-1 7). In this extract there appears not only the above-quoted passage on hieroglyphs, as well as the statement that poetry has a divine quality (cf. Hamann's and Herder's notion of the divine essence of poetry), but also, in an accurate German translation, the words: 'Die dramatische Poesie ist eine anschaubare Geschichte, sie hat einen Schauplatz, der so groB als die Welt ist.' The similarity between these words and Herder's description of Shakespeare's drama, in his essay on Shakespeare, as 'Eine Welt Dramatischer Geschichte, so groB und tief wie die Natur' (SW v, 221) ' is obvious. But Herder not only follows Bacon in describing drama as 'history'. He considers Shakespeare as an interpreter of providence, just as Bacon had said that the dramatic poet shows us more clearly the justice, wisdom or 'law of providence' (Bacon IV, 3 16), which is often obscured in the turmoil of history itself. Admittedly this conception of dramatic theodicy was familiar to Herder from Lessing's writings, and it arose naturally out of the Leibnizian tradition in Germany. But apart from all this, Herder shares with Bacon the conviction that all poetry isor ought to be ultimately rooted in our experience, through the senses, of the natural world. And Bacon, in the same extract which Herder cites, compares poetry to a plant, in the same way as Herder constantly employs organic metaphors in his early writings on literature. On the other hand, Herder seems to have taken less interest than Hamann did in Bacon's words on parables and allegories and their mystical or religious sense. But as Unger remarks (p. 244), Hamann always tended to re-interpret the naturalistic Bacon in terms of his own mystical philosophy, while religious mysticism has relatively little share in Herder's attitude to poetry, and still less in Bacon's.

More significant for the young Herder, however, than Bacon's scattered utterances on language and poetry, was the actual example of Bacon as a per- sonality embodying Herder's own ideals of the learned genius or polymath. The y o u n g ~ e r d e r believed that the 'genius' as such cannot be taught, but only fired bv the exam~le of another of his own kind. Thus, only if someone such as Bacon . ,

stands as an example before another who is capable of emulating him, 'konnte an ihm [i.e. Bacon] ein zweiter Baco entstehen, so wie Alexander an dem Grabe des Achilles, und Casar an der Bildsaule Alexanders' (SW 11, 266 (1768)). Bacon is named repeatedly as a genius capable of inspiring youth with desire for all- embracing learning (e.g. SW IX, 427, XI, 58, XXX, 413, etc.). This was indeed the inspiration which Bacon, like Kant, had given to the young Herder himself, as is clear from a poetic fragment of 1764, in which he names the two as his mentors (SW x x ~ x , 240). He saw in Bacon the universal and healthy as distinct from the one-sided or pathological genius, as one who had developed all his intellectual powers equally as an integral whole. For while he admires most of all Bacon's 'Witz', his ability to link all disparate areas of experience, he contends that Bacon also possessed 'Scharfsinn', the ability to analyse and distinguish. Both abilities, he writes (in 1775 and 1778), are necessary (SW VIII, 320 and 329; VIII, 196 and 216). In contrast to his earlier rhapsodic paeans on the poetic genius (and no doubt as a reaction against the aesthetic and moral excesses of the Storm and Stress 'Kraftgenies' who had meanwhile appeared), he maintains in 1778 that the true genius is characterized not by exaggerated 'Enthusiasmus', but by moderation, by

Herder and Francis Bacon 270

balanced development of all his powers (SW VIII, 230). I t is worth observing with Unger (p. 280) that Edward Young, who had done so much to establish the cult of genius, likewise looked up to Bacon as his example and mentor. Yet Bacon himself had little to say about poetic or scholarly genius. Paradoxically enough, he declared that his empirical philosophy, when applied to the study of nature in the way he recommends, 'places all wits and understandings nearly on a level' (Bacon IV, 63).

But Herder did not regard Bacon as a model for the poetic genius such as he hoped, when he wrote his early works, would help to rejuvenate German poetry. For Herder, his genius lay in his capacity as a polyhistor, not as an artist. His mind encompassed all departments of learning, and his universal philosophy incor-porates the ideal triad of truth, beauty, and goodness (SW XXVII, 352). He was, in fact, a model for Herder himself as a seeker after all possible learning, not for German poets as a fellow poet -Shakespeare fulfilled the latter function in Herder's scheme. Yet even among polymaths, Bacon appears exceptional: 'Ich weiB, daR fur jeden Polyhistor viele, und fur einen Baco alle MTiBenschaften verbunden seyn miinen. . . ' (SW 11, 357 (1768)). Suphan rightly relates Herder's vast plans, in his early years, for works embracing all human knowledge (e.g. his 'Universalgeschichte der Bildung der Welt', SW IV, 353), to the influence of Bacon and Kant : Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Geschichte des menschlichen Verstandes -aus dem Riesengedanken eines solchen Unternehmens, der von Baco und Kant geweckt schon dem zwanzigjahringen Jiinglinge als Lebensaufgabe vorschwebt, ist . . . fast jede groRe Leistung unseres Autors hervorgegangen. (SW xrr, 405 [editor's 'SchluBbericht'] )

Like Bacon, he continually seeks to expand, fill out, and correlate every area of knowledge. As Haym remarks :l Immer hat unser Verfasser, wie Baco, zahlreiche Desiderata auf dem Herzen; immer deutet er, wie jener, auf noch unentdeckte oder doch unbekannte Stellen des globus intellectualis.

Mindful of the stimulus he had himself received from Bacon, Herder often recom- mends him as a guide in education, as for example in the Journal of I 769: .. . man werde uberall wie Bacon [this spelling alternates with 'Baco' and 'Bako' in Herder's writings], um auf Lebenszeit zu entziinden und den Jungling auf die Akademie zu lassen, nicht als einen, der seine Studien vollendet hat, sondern sie erst anfangt . . .

(SWIV, 382;cf. 384 and 385)

Since Herder himself was hostile to all closed systems of knowledge, he admired Bacon's conception of learning as a continual dynamic process, and in 1772 he stresses 'was Bako von dem Schadlichen der Kompendien sagt, wie sie heucheln! wie sie die Wissenschaft, als scheinbares Ganze, iiberkleistern !' (SW XXXIII, 2 I 7 ; cf IX, 413). Bacon's fragmentary style is akin to Herder's, and the following words from his De augmentis, quoted in translation by Herder in 1781, are entirely in the latter's spirit: So lange die Wissenschaft in Aphorismen und Reobachtungen ausgestreut ist, kann sie wachsen: von der Methode umzaunt und umschlossen, kann sie etwa erlautert, gefeilt, zum Gebrauch bequem gemacht werden, an Gehalt aber nimmt sie nicht mehr zu.

(SW x, 401; cf. Bacon 111, 292)

1 Rudolf Haym, Herder, 2. Ausgabe, 2 Bde. (Berlin, 1g54), I, 277.

H. B. NISBET 27'

He also agrees with Bacon when he cites his remark that knowledge ought to be cultivated in the first instance for its own sake, not for any utilitarian end (SW v, 652 ( I 775) ;cf. XI, 10I ( I 78 I ) ) . With all this in mind, he several times advises young students to study Bacon, as in a letter to the young Georg Miiller in 1780.1 Even Goethe, who rejected Bacon's philosophy as a whole, concedes that his works are s t im~la t ing :~'Hochst erfreulich dagegen ist sein Aufregen, Aufmuntern und VerheiBen.' And Herder himself, especially in his early years, did not look to Bacon in the first place for information on the ultimate nature of existence. I t was basically his general approach to knowledge, universal, dynamic, open and naturalistic, which appealed to him: '. . . daran liegt mir nicht was Baco aus- gedacht hat; sondern wie er dachte' (SW 11, 263 ( I 768)).

Critics are more or less agreed that there is a pronounced 'empirical' element in Herder's thought. Again and again, in theory, though not always in practice, he supports 'Erfahrung' as opposed to 'Metaphysik' (e.g. SW XII, 9, I 10, and 177). In so far as his ideas have any real empirical and inductive foundation3 (we need only recall his Rousseauistic revolt, in the Journal of 1769, against abstract philosophy and in favour of the world of the senses), he makes it abundantly clear that it was chiefly to Bacon, with his commercium mentis et rei, that he looked as his theoretical guide, and in practice, his own nature always disposed him in favour of concrete experience and the natural world. He refers to Bacon again and again when he impugns a priori thinking, and the following passage, written in 1769, shows how thoroughly Baconian his own conception of empirical induction is: Alle Gesetze der Attraktion sind nichts als bernerkte Eigenschaften, die wir unter einander ordnen, bis ein Hauptgrundsatz wird . . .Je mehr wir diese [Grundsatze] unter einander ordnen konnen, desto weniger und einfacher werden die Gesetze, desto naher kornmen wir Einern Begriff, dern Hauptbegriff des Wesens. (SW rv, 465)

This attitude is typical of what Dewey calls the 'demand for assurance and order',4 characteristic of empirical philosophy and scientific thinking before Berkeley and Hume. I t is nothing less than a revival of Bacon's supremely confident belief that inductive methods can provide us with ultimate and infallible answers concerning the laws and nature of the universe. For Bacon had declared that we should proceed, commencing with the observations of our senses, 'from particulars to lesser axioms; and then to middle axioms, one above the other; and last of all to the most general' (Bacon IV, 97), SO that universal explanation will at last be attained, 'for beyond all doubt there is a single and summary law in which nature centres and which is subject and subordinate to God' (Bacon 111, 730). I t is clear from another passage in the Journal that Herder is fully aware that these notions come from Bacon: '. . . seine Aussichten von einem Begriffe auf einen hohern auszu-breiten, im Geist eines Bako, was ware das fiir ein Werk!' (SW IV, 384). At least in those works which deal with formal philosophy, he agrees with Bacon that all

1 Herders Briefe (Auswahl), edited by W. Dobbek (Weimar, 1959)~ p. 198, 18 October 1780; cf. SW IX, 427 and XI, 58.

2 Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe (1887-~g~g) , 11. Abth. 111, 228 (Zur Farbenlehre). 8 See H. B. Nisbet, 3.G . Herder and the Philosophy and History of Science, Diss. (Edinburgh, 1965),

I, 10 and 68, where I have tried to show to what extent he himself entertains a priori and speculative ideas, despite his protests against them.

4 John Dewey, Experience and Nature, The Paul Carus Foundation Lectures (Chicago and London, 19%)~PP. 12-13.

272 Herder and Francis Bacon

knowledge is derived from the senses. For instance, he sets out, with limited success, in his essay Vom Erkennell und Empjnden of 1778, to show that all knowledge ('Erkennen') is ultimately acquired through sensation ('Empfindung'), and that the higher mental faculties draw their data from the lower, while Bacon had written : . . . all Interpretation of Nature commences with the senses, and leads from the perceptions of the senses by a straight, regular and guarded path to the perceptions of the understanding, which are true notions and axioms. (Bacon IV, 192)

But by Herder's time, the theory of empiricism, as in the writings of Hume and even of the early Kant, had become increasingly associated with scepticism; this association has lasted down to the present day. Herder's more naive beliefs are those of an earlier age. Thus, even where he explicitly supports empirical views, he cannot be called an empiricist either by modern standards or by those of more rigorous empiricists in his own times. What is variously styled his 'empirical', 'inductive', or even 'positivistic' method retains the naively optimistic quality of its Renaissance ancestry. Thus all these words are inadequate for describing his interest in sense-experience as opposed to 'metaphysics'; for firstly, his empiricism lacks the sceptical, self-limiting discipline found in all modern scientific empiricism, and is not even as consistent as that of Locke, whose rejection of innate ideas Herder considered too extreme (SW v, 411); secondly, his inductive method simply consists of an unquestioning common-sense explanation of how we can obtain certain knowledge of the external world, instead of grappling with the epistemological difficulties associated with what has been known since Berkeley and Hume as the 'problem of induction'; and thirdly, his positivism is lacking in a consistent phenomenalistic interpretation of nature such as we find in the philo- sophies of the later positivists, for in his Gott of 1787 and in many other works, he postulates throughout nature innumerable soul-like 'Krafte' upon whose inner quality or 'divine essence' he continually speculates.

In fact, those methods of Herder hitherto described as empirical or inductive can be so designated only in a Baconian sense, since he shares with Bacon in large measure the polymath's belief that universal knowledge of the laws of nature will eventually be possible, and since he never attempts a thorough logical analysis of the limitations of empirical enquiry as nearly all empirical philosophers since Hume have done. This phase of Herder's thought may therefore best be described by the more general term 'naturalism', or, in the more particularly psychological context of the 1778 essay, as 'sensationalism' within the broad tradition of Locke and the attitude that nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu.

Herder's 'Baconian naturalism' reveals itself most clearly in his late attacks upon Kant, in which, however, even if we disregard the vexed question of a priori ideas, his attempts to refute Kant's arguments concerning the logical functions of the mind by describing the fisychological development of the mind betray a fundamental philosophical misunderstanding. For the two approaches are not mutually exclu- sive, as Herder seems to have supposed, but complementary. And as Korner puts it :l The use of the language of introspective psychology in the Transcendental Logic, which was to be concerned with the possibility of objective experience and not with its natural history, might easily lead to a confusion of its subject-matter with that of psychology. Against such confusion Kant issues frequent and forceful warnings.

1 S. Korner, Kant (Harmondsworth, 1955),p. 60.

H. B. NISBET *73

These warnings Herder failed to heed. Bacon's naturalism only confirmed him in his misunderstanding of the critical philosophy, and it is no coincidence that immediately after the words 'Das unziemende Wort Kritik der Vernunft verliert sich also in das anstandigere, wahre: Physiologic der menschlichen Erkenntnipkrafte' he quotes a long passage from Bacon's Novum organum on the virtues of empirical observation (SW XXI, 41 ff. (Metakritik)). This is another instance of the naive common-sense belief, as alive today as in Herder's time, that causal explanation based on experience somehow renders it invalid or unnecessary for us to examine logically firstly the philosophical possibility of knowledge, and secondly, the conclusions to which experiential knowledge leads.

The Baconian associa~ions and origins o f ~ e r d e r ' s feud, in his last years, against Kant, can be traced back to his earliest years as a thinker. I t is well known that he found the primary inspiration for his Metakritik against Kant in an earlier essay of Hamann's entitled Metakritik iiber den Purismum der Vernunft (cf. Haym 11, 274; also Hamann III, 283-g), in which Hamann struck out at Kant's critical philosophy for divorcing the concepts of the understanding from the experience of the senses. This, however, was an old theme of Hamann's, which he had developed in his Kreucziige des Philologen, particularly in his Aesthetica in nuce in 1762 in criticizing the abstract aesthetics of the German Enlightenment. As we have already seen, it was in this work that he quoted Bacon most frequently. And when Herder, in his Kalligone (his counterblast to Kant's aesthetics), cites Bacon against Kant, we find among his quotations the following (in German translation), which had also appeared in Hamann's Aesthetica in nuce: Hinweg, sagt Bako, die ungeschickten Welten-Maaschen! die Aeffchen [modulos et rimiolas mundorum], die die Phantasieen der Menschen in ihren Philosophieen aufgestellt haben . . . Des menschlichen Verstandes Idole sind nichts als beliebige Abstraktionen . . .

(SW XXII, 122;cf. XXIII,3 12;see also Hamann 11, 207)

Once again, our contention that Herder's Baconian naturalism came to him largely through Hamann is confirmed. He had in fact developed such ideas long before his feud against Kant, and had used them in the Journal to condemn those systems of education which fail to train the child's senses and imagination before exercising the abstract reason. As Haym says of this: Die Polemik Bacons gegen die hohlen Abstraktionen, die Wort- und Streitweisheit der scholastischen Philosophie, scheint aufs Padagogische iibertragen zu sein. (Haym I, 350)

And in a letter to Lavater in 1780, we find him invoking Bacon against Lavater, who had tried to justify paraphrases, which Herder however treats as distortions of original texts (Dobbek, p. 202, 3 November I 780).

I n the Metakritik, then, he repeatedly sets up Bacon against Kant (e.g. SW XXI,

41-2, I 14, 145, 325, etc.), and considers that Bacon's Novum organum, not Kant's first Critique, shows the real nature of metaphysical problems (SW XXI, 39). And if we require any further confirmation that he attacks Kant from a consciously Baconian position, we need but recall how often he labels Kant's philosophy as 'Scholastik', reproducing Bacon's own earlier revolt against scholasticism.

I t is then ironical that the characteristic epistemological problems posed by Bacon's naturalism led on, by a perfectly logical process, to Kant's critical philo- sophy, by way of Locke's sensationalism, Berkeley's idealism and Hume's scepticism.1

1 See Kuno Fischer, Francis Bacon und seine Schule, 3. Aufl. (Heidelberg, 1904)~p p 332 ff,

2 74 Herder and Francis Bacon

Indeed, the seeds of the critical philosophy are to be found in Bacon's celebrated scheme of idola, of modifications which the subject, the mind itself, introduces by its own distinct nature into the objective data of experience. Yet when Herder quotes Bacon's idola against Kant, the context shows that he regards Kant's abstract ideas themselves as idola, not as definitions of the limits of possible know- ledge. On the whole, Herder plays down this side of Bacon's philosophy, and was, in his own speculations, all too frequent a victim of the idola, of premature judg- ments upon experience, as I have indicated elsewhere (Nisbet 11, 343). And although he at one point (SM' XI, 58) seems to realize that Bacon's writings have an order and discipline of their own, he does not concern himself with what (relatively little) methodological discipline Bacon imposes upon induction. For example, although he once quotes a passage in which Bacon defends experiments (SW xxr, 42), he does not seem to have appreciated how important (planned) experiments are in the Baconian method, and most of his own scientific theories are built upon the experiments of others, with a large admixture of his own speculations.

But many of the inadequacies of Herder's philosophical naturalism can be matched by inadequacies in Bacon's cognate philosophy. Above all, both lack a thorough critical epistemo1ogy.l Both likewise underestimate the function of (planned) deduction, and also of mathematics, which Herder indeed uses sym- bolically, as in his so-called laws of historical development in the Ideen, but never applies to verified quantities. Besides, in relation to experiments, we may notice that both thinkers, in accepting simple induction as the means of discovering natural laws, fail to realize that the primary role of experiment, or indeed of observation in general, is 'to test theories, not to furnish them'.^ Nor do they fully appreciate the function of scientific hypotheses, or realize that these, unlike their inductive laws, need not always arise automatically out of previous sets of observa- tions; their mode of origin is irrelevant in itself -only their ability to be tested by observation, or their 'falsifiability' (as Sir Karl Popper3 calls it), is relevant.

The weaknesses inherent in the naturalistic side of Herder's thought are thus similar to Bacon's. For a German, Herder was unusually hostile to bell-defined logical systems, and this helps to explain why Bacon had a greater influence upon him than upon any other major German thinker, including Hamann. Others reacted to Bacon's radically inductive approach rather differently. For apart from the extreme case of the chemist Justus von Liebig, who tried to undermine Bacon's prestige as a thinker by attacking him as a man for his alleged immorality (Fischer, p. 332 f.), there is the more familiar instance of Goethe, who uncompromisingly condemns his methods. Goethe is indeed justified in criticizing Bacon for neglecting the subjective factors in knowledge and e~perience:~ 'Wer kann sagen, daB er eine Neigung zur reinen Erfahrung habe? Was Baco dringend empfohlen hatte, glaubte jeder zu tun, und wem gelang es?' But like many other critics, he tended to magnify excessively Bacon's inductive approach, portraying him exclusively as a

1 See Fischer, p. 148 (on Bacon): '. . . die Quellen der Sinneserkenntnis selbst untersucht er nie . . . ;so erscheint die Sinneswahrnehmung doch als die letzte, zwar zu lauternde, aber unerforschte und ungeprufte Quelle aller wirklichen Erkenntnis.'

2 A. E. Taylor, Francis Bacon, British Academy Lecture (1926), p. 9. 3 Sir Karl Popper, The Logic of Scierltific Discouery (1g5g), pp. 58 ff. 4 Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe (1948-64), XII, 434.

H. B. NISBET *75

champion of indiscriminate induction. He speaks disparagingly, in the Geschichte der Farbenlehre in I 809 or I 8I o, of 'die Verulamische Zerstreuungsmethode'1 and of Bacon's 'grenzenlose Empirie' (p. 229), which must lead, he i;convinced, to a chaos in learning. Thus he dismisses 'seine Forderungen, die alle nur nach der Breite gehen, seine Methode, die nicht konstruktiv ist, sich nicht in sich selbst abschlieBt, nicht einmal auf ein Ziel hinweist, sondern zum Vereinzeln AnlaB gibt' (p. 228). He concludes (p. 236) : Wer nicht gewahr werden kann, daR ein Fall oft tausende wert ist, und sie alle in sich schlieBt, wer nicht das zu fassen und zu ehren imstande ist, was wir Urphanomene genannt haben, der wird weder sich noch andern jemals etwas zur Freude und zum Nutzen fordern konnen.

But it is worth pointing out that Bacon's thought is considerably more systematic than either Herder, who admired his lack of system, or Goethe, who deplored it, realized. His insistence upon universal induction does not mean, as many have supposed, that he intended scientific observations to be indiscriminate, unselectively accumulated by simple enumeration of instances. We need only think of his long list, in the Novum organum, of 'Shining', 'Striking', or 'Prerogative Instances' (Bacon IV, I 50 and I 55 f.), that is, of natural phenomena which, by their excep- tional character, are more likely to reveal to us how natural laws operate than is the great mass of undifferentiated observations we collect, for 'the Form [i.e. the natural law] is found much more conspicuous and evident in some instances than others' (Bacon IV, 150; cf. Goethe's statement 'daB ein Fall oft tausende wert ist').

But behind many German attacks on Bacon we may ultimately detect the time- honoured antagonism between German idealism and British empiricism. For even Herder, who could simultaneously adopt conflicting positions with great facility, found something wanting in Bacon's sober naturalism, and maintained 'bei Baco ist nur Licht der Wahrheit, nicht Flamme, nicht Warme' (Dobbek, p. 199, Herder to G. Muller, 18 October 1780). For Baconian naturalism is only one ingredient of Herder's complex thought, as Haym justly notices: Langst hatte sich in dieser Seele der Naturalismus der Baconischen Philosophie mit dem Spiritualismus der deutschen, mit dem Interesse fiir das sittliche und intellektuelle Leben begegnet. (Haym I, 346)

And while, for example, in a review of a work by Thorild in 1800, he supports Bacon's ideal of quantitative scientific methods of studying nature against the abstractions of 'sammtliche Transcendentalisten' (i.e. the Kantians), he proceeds on the next page to take up the opposite position, this time against Thorild himself, but again in the name of Bacon: . . . so mochte Bacons Weg: "was ist da? was giebts?" erst strenge zu verfolgen seyn, ehe man an das Gefundene oder Empfundene Maas legen und fragen kann: "wie viel giebts? wie viel muR es geben?" (SW xx, 368-9)

He is here reading his own ambivalent attitudes into Bacon, for whom the quanti- tative 'wie viel' was far more important than the qualitative 'was'. Herder's naturalism, we conclude, was not nearly so consistent as that of Bacon, from whom it borrowed its philosophical justification.

I t is not surprising that Herder quotes long extracts from Bacon in his theological

1 Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe (1887-rgrg), 11. Abth. 111,246.

Herder and Francis Bacon

writings, for, in his own views on religion, especially after his somewhat less naturalistic religious phase in Biickeburg was over, he shows much in common with the English scholar.

Aware ofihe hazards involved in applying his empirical methods wholesale to religion, Bacon, in his theoretical pronouncements, usually declares (not unlike Hume) that religion, whose principal guarantee is scriptural revelation, and the rest of knowledge, which is built up by observation and induction, must be kept strictly apart (Bacon IV, 20) ;otherwise, 'from this unwholesome mixture of things human and divine there arises not only a fantastic philosophy but also an heretical religion' (Bacon IV, 66). And to preserve this separation, he calls for a special treatise, to be named Sophron, or the Legitimate Use of Human Reason in Divine Subjects (Herder's Schulreden, curiously enough, were first published, in I 8I o, under the title Sophron). But although Herder, in his Theologische Briefe (SW XI, 82), quotes Bacon's theory that religious and secular knowledge should be kept separate (once again the passage had earlier been quoted by Hamann, cf Unger, p. 246), and apparently approves of it, he was incapable of observing the distinction in practice -and so, for that matter, was Bacon.

In the first place, they both applied religious conceptions to the natural world. For despite his doctrine of incommensurability, Bacon once declared that the natural world, as well as Scripture, is a divine revelation: it is 'the book of God's works, and . . . a kind of second Scripture' (Bacon IV, 261). In 1800, and on two further occasions, Herder approvingly quotes, in translation, a similar passage from Bacon (another of those previously quoted by Hamann, 11, 207), to the effect that God's agency can be perceived throughout the created world: . .. die Ideen des gottlichen Verstandes sind wahre Bezeichnungen des Schopfers auf den Geschopfen, inwiefern sie der Materie durch zoalzre, ausgesuchte Lineamente eingedriickt und in ihr beschrankt werden. Die Dinge selbst sind Wahrheit und Giite; die Werke durch sie und mittels ihrer sind . . . wie Unterbfande gottlicher Wahrheit.

(SW XXII,122; cf, xxr, 42 and XXIII,31I )

And although the divinely emanated 'Krafte' or animistic forces which Herder postulates, especially in his Gott of 1787, are taken over chiefly from Leibniz's monads, we find Bacon, in his Novum organum, propounding the similar doctrine that 'everything tangible that we are acquainted with contains an invisible and intangible spirit, which it wraps and clothes as with a garment' (Bacon IV, 195). Like Herder (but before Newton), he believes (Bacon 111, 731) that such forces or 'spirits' can act at a distance, and he at times comes near to that conception of universal animism to which Herder was so attached, declaring that 'it is certain that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense, yet they have perception' (cf. Taylor, p. 16; also SW VIII, 264). And again, while Herder, in his Auch eine Philosophie, maintains that history manifests a divine providence, which, however, is only imperfectly visible to man within his (necessarily limited) historical situation, Bacon, in a passage quoted by Herder in I 781, appeals for a 'History of Providence' (Bacon IV, 313), for (in Herder's German translation) 'obgleich die Rathschlage Gottes unerforschlich den Menschen sind . . . , so sind sie doch zuweilen mit so groBen Buchstaben angezeichnet, daB auch der Voriiberlaufende sie lese' (SW XI, 95). In calling, like Bacon, for a 'Geschichte der Erfindungen' (in 1785), he like- wise maintains that such a history would show 'die Regierung eines hohern Schicksals' (SW XIII, 368 (Ideen)). And just as he never doubts that we can conclude

H. B. NISBET *77

from the workings of nature that God exists as a first cause, Bacon also holds that such an argument from natural theology 'suffices to refute and convince Atheism' (Bacon IV, 94I ).

From all this, we might well expect that both Bacon and Herder would be eager to discern purposes in nature; yet Bacon several times condemns those who assume in nature final causes, 'which have relation clearly to the nature of man rather than to the nature of the universe; and from this source have strangely defiled philosophy' (Bacon IV, 57; cf. 1 2 0 and 364 , and Herder, in 1787 (SW XIV, 145 and 202), rejects them in theory, although he had often used teleological arguments in practice, and indeed uses them again against Kant in the feud during his last years (e.g. SW XXI, 238). However, we find that Bacon adopts exactly the same sort of ambivalent approach as Herder does. Having rejected final causes in theory, he says in his essay Of A t h m that they are a valid argument for convincing atheists that God exists (Bacon 111, 413). This ambivalence is closely parallel to Herder's attitude in the first two (or scientific) parts of his major work, the Ideen. Here he employs an 'immanent teleology', whereby he explains the same events in terms of both efficient and final causes, in the belief that the two are not mutually exclusive, and that even if we have explained an event by efficient causes, we may still add a teleological explanation. Bacon's opinion is the same when he says of the two types of cause 'if they be kept within their proper bounds, men are extremely deceived if they think that there is any enmity or repugnancy at all between the two' (Bacon IV, 364). The similarity is worthy of notice, even if Herder's ideas on teleology owe more to Leibniz than to Bacon; yet even Leibniz himself greatly admired Bacon's philosophy. Thus, just as it is thoroughly characteristic of Herder to try to reconcile conflicting modes of explanation, and even to adopt conflicting positions simul- taneously, we may note with Hoffding that 'Bacon's doctrine of faith and knowledge . . . bears upon it the very evident stamp of compromise'.l

However, just as both thinkers were prepared to use religious criteria in studying the natural world, so also were they prepared to introduce naturalistic ones into theology. Except in his more religious phase in Biickeburg, Herder either rejects, explains away, or remains sceptical towards miracles, and Bacon declares that miracles are impossible in nature and advises us to doubt all religious reports of prodigies (Bacon IV, 168-9). He never, on the other hand, directly doubts the authenticity of scriptural miracles, although Herder frequently explains these away in natural terms, as with the miracle of Pentecost (e.g. SW VII, 470; cf. also the later Christliche Schrqten). Herder quotes Bacon's following words (in translation) with apparent agreement: 'Christus zeigte seine Macht mehr durch Wahrheit, als durch Wunder: er bezwang mehr die Unwissenheit als die Natur' (SW x, 401). And in the same year (1781) he gives in translation these further words from the De augmentis on theology: Sie besteht also aus der heiligen Geschichte, aus gottlicher Poesie, wie 2.E. die Parabeln, und aus einer ewigen Philosophie, welches ihre Pflichten und Lehren sind. (SW XI, 81)

This division applies very well to the theology of Herder's mature and later periods, when he is interested in the scriptures as a historical commentary upon Hebrew and Hellenistic society, as a set of documents of great poetic beauty (cf. his Vom

1 H . Hoffding, A History of Modem Philosophy, translated by B. E. Meyer, 2 vols. ('goo), I, 205.

2 78 Herder and Francis Bacon

Geist der ebruischen Poesie), and as a repository of moral doctrines of value to us in our pursuit of 'Humanitat'.

There are pronouncedly materialistic traits in the philosophies of both thinkers, as in Herder's fourth Kritisches Waldchen of I 769 with its theory of the 'materielle Seele' (SW IV, 105), and in Bacon's predilection for Democritus and Lucretius (cf. Fischer, p. 180). Then in the Ideen, Herder quotes a summary of a few of Bacon's remarks in support of his own theory of environmental determinism (SW XIII, 272). And despite those words cited above on spirit and perception in all natural entities, Bacon usually upheld a mechanistic theory of the universe, believing 'that all human skill can really effect in nature is to displace bodies, to move them to and from one another' (Taylor, p. I 2). Mechanistic ideas of this kind were repugnant to Herder, however; he was too attached to his all-pervading 'Krafte', which have so many associations for him, sometimes appearing, as in the Ideen, both with ~naterialistic and with spiritualistic or vitalistic overtones, but always conveying the message that nature is-not dead and soulless, as the mechan- ists believed. Bacon's conception is nearer to that of a 'geistlose, mechanische, blind wirkende Natur', as Kuno Fischer observes (pp. 318-19).

On the whole, Bacon separated theology and secular knowledge more con-sistently than did Herder, whose whole ambition was to reconcile the two. Herder's efforts at reconciliation, in his mature and later periods, resulted, as with so many adherents of natural theology, in an increasingly secularized religion, so that he applied standards associated with religion, for example teleology, less and less frequently to the natural world. I t is significant that he regularly quotes Bacon's words on religion, often at considerable length. For Bacon is one of the greatest originators of that movement in protestant thought which, setting out from an uneasy compromise, bestowed more and more attention upon nature and natural r d ~ i ~ i o n i s opposed to revelation, and it is highly probable that he helped to foster the same tendency in Herder's personal develo~ment. It is truly ironical that it was the mystic Hakann who firs't introduced Hkrder to Bacon, & thinker who, as Fischer says (p. 301), clearly prepares the way for the deistic beliefs of the eighteenth century, and whose ideas Blake could describe as 'good advice for Satan's Kingdom'.l

Amonp the numerous scattered echoes of Bacon's ideas, upon all branches of " , . learning, in Herder's works, and the long extracts from Bacon's writings, there are many whicli concern matters of detail, such as the origins of Freemasonry (SW xv, 64-7 and 74)' or are simply introduced, out of context, to reinforce ideas which are Herder's own, and owe little to Bacon himself. Yet there is one further topic in which Bacon's influence is especially marked: this is the theme of human history, particularly of the history of science and of man's growing mastery over nature.

In his ideas concerning the natural world, Herder, with his dynamic forces, his preoccupation with becoming rather than with being, and what has in general been called his 'Entwicklungsgedai~ke', has already something in common with Bacon, who appealed to men to study nature as nature works, and not in static, isolated products : For it is strange how careless men are in this matter; for they study nature only by fits and intervals, and when bodies are finished and completed, not while she is at work upon them.

(Bacon IV, 201)

1 See Basil Willey, The Seuenteenth Century Background ( I 934), p. I 0.

H. B. NISBET *79

Bacon has rightly been called 'one of the pioneers of historical science',l for, like Herder, he is as much concerned with the dynamic in human affairs as with changes in the natural world. We have already noticed how Bacon's ideas en- couraged the young Herder to formulate plans towards a universal history of human knowledge. He also found Bacon's notions on history in the wider sense congenial, as his long extracts from Bacon on various branches of history show (e.g. SW XI, 94 ff., and XXIII, 219 ff.). For example, Bacon, like Herder, criticizes pragmatic or moralizing histories; Herder indeed quotes a passage containing his objections (SW XI, 94). More important still, the following words of Bacon calling for a new civil history and quoted by Herder in German, are quite in Herder's spirit, in the desire they express to savour the past as something immediate and real, and to enter into the spirit of bygone ages and writers: Die Materialien nehme man nicht von Kritikern, sondern aus den vornehmsten Biichern jeder Zeit, koste ihren Inhalt, ihren Styl, ihre hfethode, und ruffe den Genius der Zeit [Bacon's original Latin reads "Genius illius temkoris Literarius" -Herder omits the last word -cf. his own "Zeitgeist"], wie durch eine Beschworung von den Todten hervor.

(SW XI, 95)

And while Herder, in his Auch eine Philosophie of I 774, calls the ancient Greek world the 'Jiinglingszeit' of human history (STY i,494), ~ a i o n calls the Greek wisdom 'the boyhood of knowledge' (Bacon IV, 14), and again, while Herder, in his first collec- tion of Fragmente and in his Auch eine Philosophie, applying the analogy of the ages of man to language and to European civilization respectively, implies that their old age falls in modern times, Bacon writes in his JVovum organum: For the old age of the world is to be accounted the true antiquity; and this is the attribute of our own times, not of that earlier age of the world in which the ancients lived.

(Bacon IV,82)

But these remarks of the two writers on the ages of man are worthy of attention not because of their apparent similarity, but because of the fundamental difference they conceal. For the young Herder, the 'Jiinglingszeit' of a culture, or even of mankind, has a positive significance, whereas 'old age' implies atrophy and decadence. With Bacon, on the contrary, the 'boyhood' of knowledge and human aspirations has a pejorative sense, and he considers that the 'modern antiquity' is in every way superior to earlier times. Thus, while the young Herder teaches either a historical relativism, treating every age as equally valuable, or a cyclic doctrine of recurrent cultural blossoming and decline, and at all events vehemently opposes the current eighteenth-century credo of progress, Bacon's whole gospel is one of optimism and faith that mankind will progress to ever greater heights of knowledge and of mastery over nature.

Bacon's belief in progress originates from his studies of the history of technology and applied science, which demonstrates that man must acquire ever greater control over his environment. Herder, even in his Auch eine Philosophie, shares Bacon's interest in the history of technology, but he does not arrive at the same optimistic conclusions. Instead, he traces much of the 'mechanization' he then deplored in the modern centralized state (such as Prussia) to the spread of mechanical techniques, so that the masses lose contact with the more 'natural' existence they formerly enjoyed:

1 Benjamin Farrington, Francis Bacon, Philosopher of Industrial Science (New York, 1g4g), p. 45.

280 Herder and Francis Bacon

GewiBe Tugenden der Winenschaft, des Krieges, des Biirgerlichen Lebens, der Schiffahrt, der Regierung -man brauchte sie nicht mehr: es ward Maschiene, und die Maschiene regiert nur Einer. (SW v, 534)

Thus in this work, so far as technological progress is concerned, Herder displays more of Rousseau's pessimism than of Bacon's optimism. But even in his Ideen, he points out that while there are few inventors, the benefits of the advanced civiliza- tion they help to create are thoughtlessly enjoyed by masses who have no claim to be called civilized themselves (SW XIII, 372-4 and 370). He seems to be deliberately qualifying Bacon's theory that the mechanical arts create the difference between civilization and barbarism (Bacon IV, I 14).

But as his mature period begins, Herder gradually takes a more optimistic view of technological progress, closer to that of Bacon. In I 78 I, he praises technological subjects for their utility and freedom from academic controversy, saying 'Sie sind der Wald, der immer griinet' (SW IX, 406). Bacon had likewise declared of the mechanical arts that they have 'in them some breath of life, are continually growing and becoming more perfect' (Bacon IV, 14). Then in the Ideen, Herder appeals, like Bacon, for a history of inventions: . . . so ware vielmehr eine Geschichte der Erjindungen das lehrreiche Werk, das die Gotter und Genien des Menschengeschlechts ihren Nachkommen zum ewigen Muster machte.

(SW XIII, 368)

Moreover, unlike Goethe, he came to agree with Bacon that instrumental aids to perception (such as the telescope and microscope) are entirely a benefit to mankind (e.g. SW XXVIII, 367). And in the Ideen, he moderates his earlier pessimism, saying that all inventions, even those such as gunpowder, must eventually produce auspicious results, though their immediate application may be harmful, and 'so arbeitet sich auch in den Kraften des Menschen der iibertreibende Misbrauch mit der Zeit zum guten Gebrauch um' (SW XIV, 490; cf. 241-3). For Herder, there- fore, mechanical inventions can produce either good or bad results, depending on the way in which and the conditions within which they are applied. This balanced attitude is a distinct advance beyond Bacon's one-sided, unswerving optimism.

In points of detail, there are many further signs, which need not be discussed here, of Bacon's influence upon Herder's notions of technology.1 In general, it may be noticed that both believed that great inventions usually come about by ~ h a n c e , ~and while Bacon had considered technological discovery as the greatest single factor in human history, Herder, in 1797, lists inventions and 'Revolutionen der Erde' (presumably great geological upheavals) as the mainsprings of historical change, and in 1774, as Pascal has noticed, he treats major inventions and the greatest historical occurrences as equally i m p ~ r t a n t . ~ Thus the ideas of the two thinkers on the significance (if not always on the effects) of technology in human history are comparable, and no single influence upon Herder's opinions in this matter is more easily verifiable than that of Bacon.

The further Herder distanced himself from the religious ideals of his Buckeburg period, the more the influence of Bacon on his conception of human development

1 See, for example, SW v, 533 and XIV,490: cf. Bacon IV,I 14;also SW IV,351: cf. Bacon IV,234 and 111,163.

2 SW VIII,472 and XIII,368 etc.: cf. Bacon IV, 48. 3 Roy Pascal, 'Herder and the Scottish Historical School', Publications of the En,clisl~ Goethe Society,

'4 (1938-91, 38.

H.B. NISBET 28 I

asserted itself. Herder's great theme is man, with his abilities, his historical destiny, and his place in nature, in the cosmos. And while in Buckeburg he had more insistently emphasized the divine in nature, in a way which at times recalls Hamann's mysticism, he subsequently dwells more and more upon nature in relation to man as a species, and less in relation to the deity or to man as an emotive individual or inspired 'Genie'. He writes in I 781: Wenn der menschliche Geist in Etwas den Funken seiner Gottahnlichkeit spiirt, so ists in Gedanken, womit er Himmel und Erde umfasset, die Sterne wagt, den Sonnenstral spaltet, sich in die Geheimnisse der Tiefe wagt, die Korper theilt, die Gesetze der Natur errath und die Unendlichkeit berechnet. (SW IX, 351)

A religious value ('Gottahnlichkeit') is present here, but it is firmly implanted in this world. And when, on the same page in his works, we find him explicitly referring to Bacon, the inspiration behind the ideal becomes obvious. This, and similar utterances in the ensuing years, displays an optimism and a form of human- ism akin to that of the Renaissance, whose ideals in this respect Bacon fully shared.

From the 1780's onwards, Herder begins to proclaim the greatest of Bacon's ideals, the hope and assurance that man will and must attain universal dominion over nature, impressing his mark upon everything. As Barnard says, Herder 'accepted the Baconian notion that knowledge meant powerY.l He indeed writes in 1800: Was ist durch Menschen bildbar? -Alles. Die Natur, die menschliche Gesellschaft, die Menschheit . . .Wer wagts die Grenzen zu bestimmen, wie weit die Natur und zwar Alles in ihr cultivirt werden konne und werde? (SW XXII, 314)

For man does not merely either study or defy nature. Like Bacon, Herder believes that he should study it to use it:

Dan ihr den Elementen trotzet, ist Nicht Euer groBtes Werk; zu andern sie, Sie zu gebrauchen, ist das GroBere.

(SW XXIII, 25 I )

Nature as a whole, however, is more powerful than man. Bacon had written that 'the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed' (Bacon IV, 32). This paradox takes us to the centre of Bacon's double-sided image of man and nature: on the one hand, man is but 'the servant and interpreter of nature', and on the other, his aim is Prome- thean, being nothing less than 'the victory of art over nature' (Bacon IV, 105).

The same paradox is consciously taken up by Herder, who only colours it with the pseudo-Spinozistic nature-pantheism of his treatise Gott, especially after I 787. Nature is indeed greater than man, but is not man also the greatest being within nature? Nature becomes vocal, constructive, and purposeful in a higher sense through man alone, and 'der Mensch wird die Seele, das Herz, die Hand der Natur' (SW XVIII, 341). In these words from a discarded portion of the Humanitats- Bride, Herder is freely rendering the opinions of his friend Knebel, as expressed in an essay of 1788, written, as Suphan tells us, under the inspiration of 'Baco- Studien' (SW XVIII, 574). Tinged with nature-pantheism, the same idea recurs often around this time, as in 1787, when Herder describes man as 'Priester der Natur' (SW xxv~ , 312). And in I 799, he translates Bacon's famous words on man

1 F. M.Barnard, Herder's Social and Political Thought (Oxford,1965),p. 129.

282 Herder and Francis Bacon

as the 'servant and interpreter of nature', rendering them as 'der Mensch, ein Diener der Natur und ihr Ausleger' (SW xxr, 42). Soon afterwards, he combines the Baconian and pantheistic ideas in one sentence, exclaiming 'Mensch! du bist der Ausleger der Natur, ihr Haushalter und Priester' (SW XXIII, 259 (Adrastea)). And finally, in the Adrastea, on the same page on which another long extract from Bacon begins, he gives us a poem of his own, in which all of the separate ideas hitherto discussed, that of nature-pantheism and those of man as the 'Herz' of nature, or as nature's interpreter, or as a Promethean Second Maker, are united in verses of considerable poetic power:

Von Allem, was der Weltgeist regt und pflegt, Hat Er Bedeutung Dir ins Herz gepragt.

. . . Dein innres Wort, Dein Ahnen dieser Spur, Nennt Dich, 0 Mensch, Ausleger der Natur.

Ausleger nur? Nein! Deiner Regung Kraft Enthullt in Dir die hoh're Eigenschaft Das Triebwerk der Natur kannst Du allein, Ihr Meisterwerk, der Schopfung Schopfer seyn. Voll Mitgefuhl in Freuden wie in Schmerz Schlagt in Dir Ihr, der Schopfung, groBes Herz.

Erkenne Dich! Auf Deiner weiten Flur Ward Deine Brust der Pulsschlag der Natur. Erfiillen sollst Du, was sie Dir zu thun verhiea, Einholen, was sie Dir zu thun verlieB In Geist und Liebe nur vollendet sie Sich selbst, der Wesen Einklang, Harmonie.

(SW XXIII, 3 10 (Adrastea))

From the I 780's onwards therefore, Herder's old ideal, first fired by Bacon, of a Faust-like quest for universal knowledge, is transferred fiom the individual genius of the Storm and Stress period to man viewed collectively, as a species, in his strivings to control nature. Herder's faith in human progress, once heavily qualified, now becomes truly enormous, and he affirms that it will eventually, as science advances, become possible to explain everything that seems arbitrary in nature: Die bemerkende Naturlehre, die noch so jung ist, wird in diesem allen einmal weit reichen, so daB sie zuletzt jede blinde Willkiihr aus der Welt verbannen wird . . . (SW xvr, 557)

I n all this, there lives again the prodigious confidence and optimism of the Renais- sance, and in particular of Francis Bacon, who hoped for no less than 'the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible' (Bacon 111, 156), and the extending of 'the power and the dominion of the human race itself over the universe' (Bacon IV, I I 4).

If these words appear to us today as ironical, it is not because the ideal they express seems in itself so far from being realized. I t is because in the intervening centuries, we have discovered that, before he can control the universe, man must learn to control himself.

These, then, are a few of the ways in which the great English savant resembled, encouraged, and influenced Herder. Just where his direct influence begins and ends can never be exactly determined. I t is sufficient if we can demonstrate that it was indeed real and important, particularly in its effects upon the naturalistic side of Herder's thought, although, in a mind so complex and comprehensive as that of

H. B. NISBET 283

Herder, many other sides were necessarily untouched by it. Nonetheless, this influence deserves our attention, because until recently, the naturalistic elements in Herder's thought have too often become obscured by the spiritualistic ones, just as the older Aufklarer and rationalist has been overshadowed by the youthful Stiirmer und Dranger or supposed irrationalist, and the student of Bacon and the early Kant by the disciple of Hamann. This distorted perspective can be corrected only if he is considered not only within the context of the German literary revival, but also within that of European thought at large. For both in the history of literature and in the history of ideas, the great revolutions, the supposed breaks with the past, too often tend to obscure the continuity in all European literature and thought; and besides, the legacy of nineteenth-century nationalism, despite current developments in comparative literature, survives in many misleading preconceptions which affect our attitude to past thinkers. Both Herder and Bacon can be fully appreciated only in terms of European traditions, not merely in their respective national contexts, and it is only in such terms that the influence of the one upon the other becomes at all comprehensible.

H. B. NISBET BRISTOL