Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/105



He was not a revolutionary against realities not to be despised or suppressed. With him was revived not the old phraseology dealing with certain doubtful facts, chosen first and foremost to embroider the sumptuous garment of Rhodian rhetoric. The metaphysics, traces of which can be discovered in his mentality, that of an honest if crude German peasant, with something of Luther in his lineaments as well as in his manner of thought, inspired, but could not also guide him. But the man who began with patient research among the ancient miniatures of his country, without neglecting their material aspects, was strong in the belief (very different from the materialistic « naturalist» Buckle) that moral factors govern the life of mankind and that they can be identified with types. Types changing and recurring in such regular rhythm as was for the first time conceived by the genius Vico. Thus was the theory of the human race, beginning with the type and ending with the most outspoken individualism, evolved and applied to German history, before final crystallisation in his American lectures.

Lamprecht’s theory, applied to no other history, notwithstanding the polite offers of his Japanese pupils, will not endure, though much of his noble work is worthy of preservation : his broad outlook, his faith in psychological factors, his convinction that all manifestations of human life are parts of one connected whole, of one preconcerted scheme.

After the world war, a very different directive seems to have had its source of inspirations otherwise than in Lamprecht’s ideology. I refer to the recent theories of Spengler, so much discussed by the few and so naively accepted by the multitude. He seems, insofar as it is possible for a trained mind to pursue such ideas, both to accept for himself and to preach to others the doctrine that, following a rhythm of its own, humanity sets up civilisations which