PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 609 
o 
attempt to solve the problem of the development of man and his culture, and to 
create, in the modern sense, a Science of Man. 
‘ Already in comparatively early years,’ he says, ‘when the field of knowledge lay 
before me in all that morning glory from which life’s midday sun detracts so much, 
the idea often besets me, since everything in the world has its philosophy and 
science, ought not human history, which after all lies nearest to ourselves, to have 
in a general sense its philosophy and science also?’ He argues, thereupon, that 
we must discard speculation and follow experience simply. ‘ When, therefore, we 
set about philosophising upon the history cf our species, let us forswear, as far 
as possible, all narrow forms of thought which are derived from the culture of a 
single region, or even of a single school. It is not what man is among ourselves 
nor what he ought to be in the conception of any dreamer whatever ’—this is 
clearly aimed at Rousseau—‘ but what he is on the earth in general, and at the 
same time in every single region in particular; or rather, what it is to which the 
rich multiplicity of accidents in the hands of Nature has had the power to train 
him, This is what we are to regard as the purpose of Nature for him.’ 
Herder, that is, conceives it as possible, at the same time to determine 
inductively what Man is in himself, and to determine by simple description 
what he actually is (or rather what men actually are) under the various different 
conditions in which we find him. But he insists on the distinction between 
these two modes of regarding Man, or Men; and rightly, for it is the confusion 
between the description of this or that kind of uncivilised Man—Iroquois, 
Hottentot, or South Sea Islander—and the guess that uncivilised Man every- 
where must have such and such qualities or defects of qualities, which had in fact 
produced all the discrepancies between the previous theories of a Pre-Social state. 
Writing when he did, Herder of course was but little more capable than his 
predecessors of delineating human nature in detail on inductive lines. His merit 
lies in the clearness with which he gripped and stated the conditions of the 
problem; in an advance of method, which came just in time to guide the 
theoretical treatment of a vast mass of new data. At the same time he did 
accomplish a good deal, even as regards the filling in of the picture, In particular 
he marks the turn of the tide from the philosophy of the Pre-Social State towards 
the old Aristotelian conception of Man as asocial animal. Both Hobbes and Locke, 
though not I think anywhere named, come in for effective criticism. ‘There 
have been philosophers,’ he says, ‘ who on account of this instinct of self-preserva- 
tion have classified our species among the Carnivora, and made out its natural 
state to be a state of war. Of course when Man plucks the fruit of a tree he is 
a robber; when he kills'an animal he is a murderer; and when—with a 
footstep, with a breath, perhaps—he takes the life of myriads of invisible 
creatures, he is the most brutal oppressor on earth . . . But put Man 
among his brethren, and ask the question, Is he naturally a beast of prey 
to his own kind, is he an “ unsocial” being? In his physical shape he is clearly 
not the former, by his birth still less the latter.’ Herder is thus returning 
afresh to the Aristotelian conception of the parental bond as the complement and 
remedy of the long helpless infancy. Herder’s ideal Man has, in fact, a Humanity 
which is in itself an end, an ideal, not a pre-social attribute, and just for this 
reason Humanity exists potentially in all members of the species, however small 
their progress towards realising it, or however eccentric the results of their social 
activity. ‘Look at the godlike laws and regulations of Humanity, which emerge, 
if only in the merest traces, among the most savage peoples. Can they really 
have been invented by the exercise of reason only after the lapse of thousands of 
years? Can they really owe their origin to this changeful sketch, this man-made 
abstraction? I cannot believe it, even from the standpoint of history. If men 
had been distributed like animals on the earth’s surface, to invent for themselves 
the inner form of Humanity, we should still find mere human stocks, without 
language, without reason, without religion or morals; for as Man was created 
such is he still upon the earth.’ 
The Patriarchal Theory, 
All these theories of a Social Contract as the starting-point of human 
societies presupposed, as we have seen, that mankind had actually passed 
1909. 
RR 
