type of liberalism which no longer recognized the individual as the basic unit in politics and as the purpose for which the state exists. The draft did guarantee the basic rights of the individual to be secure in his person and in his property, due process of law, freedom of conscience, and freedom of the press. It also provided for representation. The draft conceived the constitution not merely as serving the “objective” purpose of the state and providing more efficient government, but also as fulfilling the “subjective” needs of the citizens. Through political participation, they would grow morally and spiritually. Society was no longer seen as a composite of individuals, but as an organic whole of corporations representing social functions. The corporations, it is true, were adapted to the demands of modern Prussian life and primarily were viewed as organs of political representation.
Humboldt wished to maintain the economic freedom established by the reform edicts. The political role of the nobility was to be preserved only to the extent that the nobles still fulfilled an actual function. Humboldt idealized corporate institutions far less than Stein. Extensive administrative functions were to be transferred from the central government to the communities and the provinces in order to stimulate local participation in public affairs. The proposed estates general for the monarchy were to have powers similar to those possessed by the parliaments created by the French Charter or by the Southwestern German constitutions granted in the 1820’s, and they were to resemble these parliaments in their organization. But the language of this document, which certainly envisaged a much higher degree of popular participation than did these other constitutional documents, was much further removed than they were from the principles of 1789. The author of the Limits of the State now saw the individual acquire his rights of citizenship, no longer by virtue of being an individual, but only on the basis of meeting the qualifications for acceptance into a corporation.51
4.
There is little radically new in the three important essays which Humboldt wrote on the nature of history after 1814. His views of history, in terms of growth and life, his stress that the act of understanding requires the total personality and not merely the rational faculties of the observer, and his belief in the uniqueness of the individual, were all present. However, the emphasis had changed. The residues of belief in a common human nature and in common human rights derived from reason (basic elements of the theoretical foundations of the political liberalism of Humboldt’s Limits of the State), now had receded almost completely in the background. His theoretical rejection of rational ethics and of objective criteria of knowledge was now almost absolute. History remains the only source of knowledge about man, but since man is irrational and history the scene of his actions, history must be approached by a method which takes into account this irrationality.
Three aspects of Humboldt’s essays of this period are of particular interest: (a) the extent to which he pursues the irrational forces of life and history; (b) his theory of ideas52 by which he seeks to find a metaphysical foundation for his doctrine of individuality and discover meaning and a common basis of existence in a pluralistic world; (c) his theory of understanding or Verstehen53 through which he attempts to do justice to the irrational nature of history, as well as of man.
The first aspect, the irrational character of history, forms the topic of Humboldt’s “Reflections on World History,”54 a bitter critique of the idea of progress and all attempts at systematic philosophies of history, including those of Kant. It is folly to seek meaningful direction in history, Humboldt argues. Attempts to do so only do violence to the events of history by forcing them into schemes and robbing them of their individuality. They treat mankind too intellectually, cutting the close relation of man’s history with the forces of nature. There is indeed coherence (Zusammenhang) in history, but of an organic rather than an intellectual kind. Mankind, Humboldt suggests, resembles a plant, an analogy which was not entirely fortunate since a plant possesses an internal structure which Humboldt apparently denies to the history of man. The individual person’s relation to the nation is comparable to a leafs relation to the tree. Mankind consists of a ladder of individualities from the individual through the collective bodies to the race as a whole. Each individuality (whether individual person or nation) receives its unique character not in slow stages, but by sudden spontaneous generation. The birth of an individuality is also the beginning of its decline. The individuality dies, but its spirit survives. Thus, it is “the most important thing in world history to preserve this spirit as it endures, changes form, and in some cases becomes extinct.”55
There is indeed a purpose to world history, but it is not to be found in a progressive perfection of man. We must not expect man to attain an abstractly conceived end, Humboldt warns; rather, we must hope that the “creative power of nature and ideas remains inexhaustible.”56 Mankind as a “whole” existed only “in the never attainable totality of all the individualities which in the course of time become real.”57 The intent of history is that all energies express themselves and develop clear expressions of their individual characters. There is no higher purpose. Individual lives are not parts of a superpattern. “The fates of human generations roll past like the streams which flow from the mountains to the sea.”58
In sharp contrast to German Idealist philosophers or even to Herder, Humboldt denies any meaningful development in history. Here the analogy with the plant seemingly ends. For every individual at his spontaneous birth contains something radically new. Again the genius, “a great mind or a mighty will,” might suddenly give rise to something “new and never experienced,” completely incapable of “mechanical” explanation.59 Certain uniformities do exist in nature and even in man, Humboldt admits. Without them, no statistics would be possible. But the element of freedom and the continuous creation of novelty make any historical prediction impossible. Indeed, history is chaos. Man, possessing intellect, might carry certain ideas from nation to nation and develop them, “but suddenly,” he warns, “his noblest creations are destroyed again by natural events or barbarism,” for “it is evident that fate does not respect the creations of the spirit. This is the mercilessness of world history.” In studying wars and revolutions the historian does not need to ask about their purposes, but only about their origins which often were “physical or animalistic” in character. Basic in human history is the vitalistic “urge to produce and to reproduce.”60 The historian who primarily approaches world history from the standpoint of the growth of cultures or civilization misunderstands the extent to which man is not a being of reason and understanding, but a product of nature.61
This brings us to the second aspect of Humboldt’s essays. If history is all flux, the individualities remain as a stable element and through them history gains meaning. In his essay “On the Task of the Writer of History, (1822)”62 Humboldt further develops the thought, already expressed in earlier writings, that the individualities are merely the concrete, historical expressions of an underlying metaphysical reality, the ethical ideas.
Yet the term “ideas” must not mislead us, for they are not clear concepts. They are not to be understood in the Platonic sense as pure forms which could find their repeated imitations or approximations in the physical world. Each idea represents the essence or character of an actually existing individuality. In this sense, ideas are conceived as eternal and would survive their physical manifestations. But ideas certainly are not universal in the sense of a Platonic triangle or of the Platonic concept of justice, able to manifest themselves in very different historical situations. Each idea is related to something real in the physical world. Humboldt probably never should have used the term “idea” in this way, for he refers to something thoroughly nonrational; namely, to those elements in natural and historical reality which cannot be explained in terms of rational factors. The doctrine of ideas, as formulated by Humboldt, involves the recognition of the basically irrational character of human history and human life. Indeed, Humboldt’s concept of individuality carries within it elements of the nihilistic notion that history is nothing but a mass of individuals with individual wills.
This doctrine of ideas seems to point at a hopeless chaos of values. Actually, of course,
