The Meaning of History BOOKS OF THE DAY
By H. G. WOOD Tut: question, " what is the meaning of history ? " becomes urgent, whenever an existing social order is threatened with collapse. If we are living in critical times, we are more or less aware that we are making history by our decisions. The enquiry into the meaning of history is an appeal to our knowledge of the past to aid us to the right decisions by giving us a sense of direction. The appeal must be made not to the historian as such, but to the philosopher who offers us an interpretation of the findings of the historians.
Philosophers proverbially disagree. It is indeed their metier. One, obsessed by the vanished pomps of yesterday and observing the recurrent defeat of human hopes, will endorse the verdict of the preacher, " vanity of vanit'es, all is vanity." Another, basing a belief in progress on the fact of biological evolution, will discover in history an advance which may be rubricated " on and on and on, up and up and up." Faith in progress is out of fashion, yet something within us revolts against a pessimism which issues in in- difference or despair. A deeper philosophy of history should he sure of a welcome. Such a philosophy Nicolas Berdyaev offers us.
The facts that we have to make history and that our decisions are important suggest that history is the sphere of human freedom and responsibility. We have to act in an environment of natural law and necessity and we have to deal with situations created by the previous actions of our- sel•es and our predecessors, but our conduct is not simply predetermined. Hence there is good and evil in history— genuinely creative good and actually destructive evil. The hir t alan is haunted by a sense of what might have been, and he is not the subject of an illusion. The events he tries to understand need not have happened as they did in litet happen. Some events ought not to have happened as they did.
All attempts to interpret the course of human affairs in terms of some natural or logical necessity break down. As 13erdyacv sees it, history confronts us with the deepest mysteries of the spiritual and of the relation of the spiritual to the natural. Gnostic myths of Depth and Silence, Boehme's speculations about The Mystery of Darkness, seem to him profounder than Hegel's interpretation of the absolute as dialectic process. He would carry passion and tragedy into the heart of The Eternal, and find in celestial history the due to man's destiny on earth.
To the matter-of-fact Englishman this conception of celestial history may seem strange and forbidding, but the conclusions regarding Time and Eternity will be more con- vincing. It is difficult to discover any meaning in history, if Time he regarded as real, and equally difficult if Time be regarded as illusion. Time that " like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away " is Death's confederate. If Time be the ultimate reality, we are all Time's fools. On the other hand, if Time be an illusion, we must discover all true values in some a-historical mysticism. History only has a meaning on two conditions, first that eternal values are somehow realised in temporal events, and second that the temporal process has significance for eternity. The coming of Christ effectively establishes these conditions, and apart from the Christian event and the Christian faith, there is neither unity nor meaning in history.
History for Berdyaev embraces three completed periods. In the first period, man is closest to Nature, but subservient
The Meaning of History. By Nicolas Berdy acv. (Geoffrey Bles. 8s. M.)
to what St. Paul calls the beggarly elements. This period ended when Christ set men free from the power of baser ele- mental Nature and demons. Thegift of spiritual freedom came through the Christian redemption. In the second, the Mediaeval period, the Christian man is on the defensive, alienated from Nature of which he is afraid because of its associations with paganism. He is asserting and conserving his spiritual nature, by discipline and asceticism. The Mediaeval discipline did not give sufficient outlet for the stored spiritual energies of men. In the third period, the humanism of the Renaissance afforded the required outlet. Man asserted his lordship over Nature, treating it as is mechanism to be explored and exploited in his interest. His independence over against Nature was part of his Christian heritage, but Western man drifted further and further away from the faith on which his true freedom depends. In consequence, he is losing freedom. Man has become enslaved to his own mechanical devices and to his mechanical conception of Nature. " Man's self-affirmation leads to his perdition." " We are now entering upon an absolutely unknown period, the fourth period of universal history which has, as yet, no name. It denotes, too, the final bankruptcy of both the Renaissance and humanism." The next period has no name, for its character is not yet determined.
A religious transfiguration of the present situation is possible, though not inevitable. But we must expect a growth of evil as well as a growth of good, for the Christian philosophy of history is essentially apocalyptic. Anti-Christ is at war with Christ till the world's end, and history is pre-eminently destiny, tragic destiny.
Such a brief summary cannot do justice to the light which Berdyaev throws on different features and phases of the main periods he distinguishes in universal history. He devotes a striking chapter to the destiny of the Jews, and stresses their demand for the realisation of truth and justice on earth. A perverted Jewish Messianism, " which expects the coming of another Messiah, following the repudiation of the true one," lives on in Marxist Socialism. While he thus deals with Judaism, Berdyaev offers no estimate of Islam. The analysis and discussion of the Renaissance are full and illuminating. The repudiation of the doctrine of progress is almost vehement. The doctrine of progress is first and foremost an entirely illegitimate deification of the future at the expense of past and present in a way that has not the slightest scientific philosophical or moral justification." " The religion of progress regards all the generations and epochs that have been as devoid of intrinsic value, purpose or significance, as the mere means and instruments to the ultimate goal."
This idea of progress, the idea whose history was so well told by J. B. Miry, is indeed indefensible, and is rightly rejected. But Western Christians who read this remarkable book may wonder whether Berdyaev has not overstressed Gnostic and apocalyptic elements in Christianity and may ask whether there is not a valid Christian expectation of progress. Such an expectation might base itself on Hebrews XI and still more forcibly on the mission of the Paraclete as described in the gospel of John. The Christian is led to expect in the course of history fuller revelations of truth and greater practical achievements in Christ's name. Berdyaev is so anxious to insist that the issues of history lie beyond history in eternity, that he tends to depreciate the growth of Christ's influence in succeeding generations.
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