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From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved,
the mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the
earth that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of
the ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible
to retain the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but
without disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying
the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law
of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long
time.
From the time the first person said and proved that the number
of births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that
this or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical
and economic conditions, and that certain relations of population
to soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which
history had been built were destroyed in their essence.
By refuting these new laws the former view of history might
have been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible
to continue studying historic events as the results of man's free
will. For if a certain mode of government was established or certain
migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such
geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free
will of those individuals who appear to us to have established
that mode of government or occasioned the migrations can no longer
be regarded as the cause.
And yet the former history continues to be studied side by
side with the laws of statistics, geography, political economy,
comparative philology, and geology, which directly contradict
its assumptions.
The struggle between the old views and the new was long and
stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on
guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation.
But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as
firmly on the new foundation.
Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding
between the old and the new conception of history, and theology
in the same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses
the new view of subverting revelation.
In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle
provokes passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear
and regret for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through
the ages, on the other is the passion for destruction.
To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical
philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would
destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in
the miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the
laws of Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed
that the laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized
the law of gravitation as a weapon against religion.
Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good
and evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have
been built up on those conceptions.
So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of
the law of inevitability today use that law as a weapon against
religion, though the law of inevitability in history, like the
law of Copernicus in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens
the foundation on which the institutions of state and church are
erected.
As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of
history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition
or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure
of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of
the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free
will.
As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion
of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the
earth's fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history
the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to
the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct
feeling of the independence of one's own personality. But as in
astronomy the new view said: "It is true that we do not feel
the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we
arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do
not feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new
view says: "It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence,
but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by
admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on
cause, we arrive at laws."
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness
of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we
did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to
renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence
of which we are not conscious.
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