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alone ruled as a power superordinated over individual men and binding individual men, the world's history would be like the growth of a plant; individual freedom would be oppressed by its weight; there would be no deeds, no works of men peculiar, but only joint works of the general human mind. But the times-spirit is only one of the moving forces; in the struggle with that force, the spirit of tradition and of traditional authority asserts itself; side by side with it works the special spirit of the nationality of a definite people, of dynasties and families, but above all, of remarkable individual men. From the reciprocal struggle and strife, action and interaction, of all human forces, proceed all world-historical results.

and efficient of the forces which determine the world's history. By the psychologic law of ordered change, which is innate, as a common faculty, in the human race, the human race is spurred on to gradual development and perfection, and guided to its destiny. By the times-spirit, to which God has borne testimony, before the mind of man, God, with far-stretching rein, guides the course of the world's history, and carries humanity unceasingly forward. Once the great significance of the times-spirit is recognized, men will revere it as something sublime, as something divinely human, and look upon those who, ever

the sum of separate spirits. If it were only the sum of separate spirits, the fact that the same individuals follow this current of the times-spirit to-day, and to-morrow perhaps an entirely opposite current, would remain entirely unexplained. Their individual inclinations and opinions remain sometimes the same, notwithstanding they allow themselves to be carried away by the new current. Under the cover of their own roof, they do not hesitate to give expression to their opposition to, and heartfelt dislike of, the course which they publicly pay homage to and obey. With these, therefore, their change of attitude is not arbitrary. It is not these gentlemen's own spirit that calls forth the spirit of the times. Moreover, if the times-spirit were only the sum of individual spir--But the times-spirit is one of the most important its, it would not be possible to explain why the spirit of the times is so widely propagated, and yet seems specially powerful now in one country, and now in another. So, too, would remain unexplained the intrinsic connection of the movements of the times-spirit with one another, and the succession of its changes in great periods of time from age to age, a connection and succession which extend far beyond the brief lives of individual men, and which, therefore, can not be measured by the standard of individual men, nor be dependent on individual men.- Lastly, if the times-spirit were nothing but the sum of individual minds or spirits, the many-sided struggle of the individual | turned toward the eternal and unchangeable, put with the spirit of the times would be inconceivable; and yet that struggle is fought out frequently by individual men with themselves and within themselves, and not merely with other men. But if the times-spirit be not the sum of individual minds or spirits; if, rather, there be unity in its nature and development, its cause must be looked for only in humanity as a whole. Only on the supposition that humanity as a unit has a psychic aggregate bent or aggregate disposition of its own, an aggregate destiny of its own, and therefore an aggregate development of its own, can the times-spirit be explained; and then it is explainable as the orderly development of the soul-life of humanity. And so it is indeed. The world's history is the documentary proof that there is such a thing as a development of humanity, a development which progresses through great lifeperiods in organic sequences. The world's history and the times-spirit are nearly related and closely connected phenomena. The times-spirit accompanies the world's history in the paths of its development, and exercises its unceasing influence on the shaping of that history. The general character and spirit which, in the different periods and ages of the world's history, assumed a definite form, were once, when events were still, so to speak, in their fluid state, to a great extent, the spirit of the times. The world's history is development behind us, development in the past, succession that is past. The times-spirit is the development of the human mind in the present. But the times-spirit is certainly not the only thing that determines the world's history. If it

a low estimate on the changes of the times-spirit,
as short-sighted and unwise. The manifoldness
of human life in common and the freedom of
human development, are instigated and led by
the changes of the times-spirit. — III. What, we
may now ask, should be the attitude of the states-
man toward this great intellectual power? 1.
First, he is obliged carefully to notice the signs of
the times, and to study the spirit of the times in
which he is called to work. The question, What
time is it? is always eminently important; for not
at every hour you wish, can what you wish be
done. Everything has its time, and the man who
at the wrong time, whether too early or too late,
undertakes great things, will generally succumb
under difficulties, and his endeavors will remain
without result. Then, again, the present world
must first answer the question, In what world-
period do we live?
character of our age? The world of our day is
not clear on this point. But this much, I think,
can be confidently asserted: The so-called modern
world-period, in which a new revolution of the
great wheel of the world's history is going on,
has still an aspiring youthful character. Human-
ity has not yet reached the height of its aggregate
life. The immeasurable results of the modern
sciences and the whole political movement of the
time bear testimony to the masculine spirit of
modern humanity, with its will to become con-
scious of itself, and to shape itself in freedom.
Ours is a great creative age, more conscious and
more free than any former world-period. Hence,
in the spirit of this our world-period, a liberal

What is the fundamental

Garland's Life of Randolph, 66; Adams' Life of Randolph, 109; 3 Benton's Debates of Congress, 142 (Randolph's resolutions), 333 (Granger's letter and defense); 2 Stat. at Large, 235, and 3:116 (acts of March 3, 1803, and March 31, 1814); 1 Stat. at Large, Bioren & Duane's ed., 460, 512 (evidence collected and published by Georgia); Fletcher vs. Peck, 6 Cranch's Reports, 87, or 2 Peters' Reports, 328; Jameson's Grounds and Limits of Rightful Interference by Law with the accumulation and use of Capital, and authorities cited. ALEX. JOHNSTON.

in the judgment of many, the better law in regard | to the proper application of the principles of the Dartmouth college case. By going back, therefore, to the path which was abandoned when the rule in that case, that of a private eleemosynary corporation, was perverted to the maintenance of corporate institutions invested with great public functions, not only congress but the states will be left free to bring the needful legislation to bear against those monster establishments deeming themselves impregnable behind the barrier of the constitution."-See authorities under GEORGIA; 4-6 Hildreth's United States (index); 2 Schouler's United States, 74; 2 Tucker's United States, 186; 1 | LAW.)

YEAS AND NAYS. (See PARLIAMENTARY

ZEI

EITGEIST. Its Nature and Power. The Zeitgeist is a German word, meaning the spirit of the times, or the spirit of the age. In the following article it will be frequently rendered literally by the English compound Times-Spirit. - Every one feels the power of the times-spirit, but no one explains to us on what that power depends. All speak of the times-spirit, or of the spirit of the age; most men pay homage to it; yet nobody tells us what the times-spirit which they worship and which they sometimes unwillingly obey, is. The idea of the times-spirit did not originate in our day. It was given expression to, even by the brahmans of ancient India. The old Romans were acquainted with the "spirit of the century" (the sæculum). (Tac. Germ., 19.) But our age has grown more attentive than any former one to the drift of the spirit of the times.

Hence the ques

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tion, What is the times-spirit? imperatively demands an answer. - I. Let us first see by what external signs men think they can recognize the times-spirit, and what qualities they ascribe to it. —1.

The times-spirit manifests itself chiefly in the definite character and the special intellectual direction by which the different ages and the different phases of the times are distinguished from one another. The contrast noticeable between the great periods of the world's history, marks also the changes or transformations of the times-spirit, in a general way. Even the spirit of the middle ages was once present in the world as the spirit of the times, as the times-spirit; and in its time it crushed out the spirit of the ancient world, just as it had itself to yield subsequently to the spirit of modern times. Again, in these great periods of the world's history the spirits of the centuries, and even of the half-centuries composing them, are surprisingly different. Only, the century must not be reckoned according to our Christian system of chronology, for the experience of history everywhere shows, that the spirit of the new century becomes observable in all its youthful impetuosity even in the last decade (according to Christian chronology) of the previous century. Christ was not born at

the beginning of a century, and hence our Christian chronology does not correspond with the chronology of the periods of the world's history (weltperioden, world-periods). — With the ages, new ideas, like stars, rise above, and again sink below, the horizon of humanity. In one century, an idea has a powerful attraction for men; in another, that same idea exercises no influence whatever. In one age, men wax enthusiastic over it, in the next they pass it by coldly and indifferently. In the twelfth century (including the last decade of the eleventh) all Christian Europe was stirred to its very centre by the desire to rescue the sacred sepulchre of Jesus from the infidel. To effect that end, millions of men with fiery ardor rush into the arms of unknown danger, privation and death. But this fanatical impulse loses its power over minds in the thirteenth century, and, later, dies out entirely. The second half of the fifteenth and the first of the sixteenth century, favor the renaissance of ancient ideas, and the reformation of the church, which had previously been attempted, without success, by individuals; while, from 1540 onward, the spirit of reaction and torpidity rose up and was just as victorious. In the seventeenth century, princely absolutism everywhere celebrated its triumph over the estates system; and in the eighteenth, beginning with 1740, the craving for enlightenment and the freedom of the middle class of citizens raged with the violence of revolution. The nineteenth century corresponds with the growth of representative constitutional government and the national (see NATIONALITIES, PRINCIPLE OF) current in politics. In one age, the fundamental feature of the timesspirit is liberal; in another, conservative; while in a third it is either radical or absolutist. — The same changes or transformations of the times-spirit are, besides, visible in miniature, in any one age. Here, too, there is an upward and a downward movement to be distinguished. The spokes of the great wheel of the world's history consist of smaller wheels which have a rotation of their own. The very same men grow enthusiastic, in one

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and chief cause. The best liberal government can not prevent the return of the time of a conservative tendency. And when, even an absolutistic government makes no gross mistakes, the times-spirit does not always persist in the same direction, but from time to time ventures a leap in the way of radicalism. — But the spirit of the times does not propagate itself in entirely the same measure among different peoples. It changes, too, the principal representatives of its character for the time being. At one time one nation, and at another time another, appears as the especial organ of the times-spirit, according as the peculiar nature of such a nation harmonizes with the most prominent quality of the spirit of the times. The spirit of the times in this way lifts up the nations, and lets them fall again. — The principal seat of the times-spirit in Europe, in antiquity, was first Greece, and, later, Rome. During the middle ages the Germans, although unconscious of the fact, were the representatives of the spirit of the times. In the age of the reformation of the church the German nation was the chief organ of the times-spirit, just as the French nation was in the age of the revolution. In the former instance, the times-spirit swept from Germany over northern and western Europe; in the latter, like a storm, from Paris over the European world. The full power of the moving times-spirit, like the crest of a wave, becomes perceptible only in the land or among the nation which is its principal seat or principal representative; and its force in other lands and among other peoples decreases in intensity, until the wave reaches its trough. — 3. The great power of the times-spirit shows itself mainly in the multitude. It comes over the masses, they know not how themselves, and gives them the direction which they follow. The greater number of them surrender themselves up to its

phase of the times, over popular freedom, and in another call for a dictatorial power; but, in both instances, they appeal to the spirit of the age with which the direction they follow is in harmony. When Napoleon I. undertook to re-establish Casarian authority, he tried to discover, by means of pamphlets which he caused to be scattered widespread, whether the time for it had come, just as Noah, according to the Jewish record, once tried to find out whether the waters of the deluge had subsided; and Napoleon repeatedly postponed carrying his design into execution, because the time had not yet come for it. At last the signs of the times seemed favorable to him; he then cast aside the veil of the consulate, and founded the new empire. Such an undertaking would have been as impossible later, at the time of the restoration | after 1815, as it would have been earlier, in the turbulent time of the revolution. This changing of the times-spirit seems to protect mankind from the lasting, all-crushing despotism of a single, onesided tendency or direction, and of one sole power. Time causes one force to set again, which it had previously called on to rise, and summons other sleeping forces into life and operation. With time the wheel of destiny turns round, and now new hopes and cares awaken, and now again old sorrows and old joys approach their end. In the change of human things the change of the timesspirit has a great share. Not our globe alone is round and must turn on its axis; the times-spirit too revolves, and, by its revolution, exercises a changing influence on the opinions and doings of men.-2. A second noteworthy observation is the propagation of the times-spirit. Were it limited to a single country, or to a definite nation, we would suppose we discovered it in the peculiar spirit of that country or that nation. But it is evidently not confined within the boundaries of a country; it moves, in the same current and direc-impressions, and allow themselves to be filled by tion, over different nations. Like the currents of the wind, in the atmosphere, it now moves from the east to the west, and now from the north to the south, and vice versa. The religious, believing, and, in a political sense, feudal, fundamental feature of the medieval times-spirit, spread not only over Christian Europe, but, simultaneously, over the Mohammedan east. - It is often thought that the changes in the spirit of the times can be explained by certain definite experiences of a people, or by certain measures taken by its government. The explanation is a wrong one; for the spirit of the times changes among other peoples also, with different experiences and different governments. We must not think that the change in the spirit of the times was caused for the reason that this thing or that thing hap-cosmic causes. Astrologers calculated the destiny pened, or for the reason that this thing or that was left undone. It may be that such happening or leaving undone of a thing may, as a secondary cause, have helped the efficiency of the change of the times-spirit, or put obstacles in its way. The change itself, however, is not dependent on such happening or leaving undone, and has another

it. As plants, at certain seasons of the year, shoot forth and blossom, then stand still and fade, nations are now stirred to action by the current of the times-spirit, and again are relegated by it to rest. The times-spirit wakes up and slumbers according as these qualities or those appear in it. Its course is mysterious. It forces itself in like the wind; it communicates itself from one man to another just as heat does from one body to another. At times, it spreads like an epidemic, and, in a moment almost, transforms the hopes and moods of men. -But there is a great difference between the times-spirit and the cosmic influences of the seasons and the changes of the wind. There was a time when men sought to explain the strangest effects of the times-spirit by

of men from the constellations of the heavens. They thought that by the position or movement of the planets especially they might discover men's plans and acts, and measure the change of the times-spirit. Fruitless and foolish endeavor! Were the cause of the change of the times-spirit to be found in the external nature of our globe,

of human life, and sought by them to explain the changes of the times-spirit, were happier. But Frederick Rohmer investigated the law of the times-spirit more deeply and more comprehensively than any other writer, and explained it by psychology. His own nature, which was very sensitive to, and had a fine feeling for, all the changes of the times-spirit, constantly spurred him on to observe its course, and follow it, like the minute-hand of a clock, with strained attention. In this way he at last found an accurate measure for the movement of the times-spirit. — This prevalence of law in its movement distinguishes the spirit of the times from the changeable fashion. The times-spirit, indeed, exercises its power on the fashion too. It manifests itself by way of preference in the art style of different ages, from which even the fashion can not free itself, and most clearly in the architectonic style, but in music and in literature also. Thus the fashion only followed the times-spirit, when, in the seventeenth, and to some extent in the eighteenth century, it gave its preference to rococo forms, and delighted in queues and hair-bags. Again, it was led by the spirit of the times when the French revolution revived antique fashions, corresponding to the republican models of Grecian and Roman antiquity, which then had great influence on the renovation of public life; and when it afterward, in the Napoleonic period, turned to the aristocratic and severer forms of Cæsarian Rome. To the extent that the fashion follows the times-spirit, it, too, is determined by law. But side by side with this law, the individual inclinations, whims and moods of persons and social centres, operate very powerfully on the fashionpersons and centres which are looked upon by the rest of society as authorities, and in whose footsteps the rest of society is accustomed to follow. The lions and lionesses of fashion in Paris and London are not always led to their resolutions and choices by the general movement of the timesspirit, but are determined in great part by their own freedom. We know, for instance, what kind of a personal cause it was that brought crinoline into fashion; and, in men's adhesion to the dress coat and silk hat, we perceive not so much the changeableness of the times-spirit as the supremacy of French style. -II. What, then, is the times-spirit, the qualities of which we have been considering? Is it really, as many suppose, the sum of individual human minds existing at a given time? When Goethe once wished to ridicule the false times-spirit, he wrote the well-known lines:

that same cause, like the seasons of the year, like | which pointed to the succession of the age-stages the changes of heat and cold, like the currents of the wind, would necessarily exercise an influence on men and on all other creatures, at the same time on plants and on animals. But of this there is no trace. No matter how the times-spirit changes, the growth of plants and the life of animals do not follow the change. They do not feel it. The power of the times-spirit manifests itself only in the life of man; it is connected with human nature, and is scarcely explainable except by the facts of human nature. As the times-spirit is confined to the world of men, its power is enhanced by the intercourse of men with one another, and in many ways weakened and checked by the isolation of men from one another. Nowhere is the times-spirit stronger than in great cities, in which men live closely packed together in constant and active intercourse with one another. It rules much less in the country, with its small villages and scattered farm-houses. The seclusion of a monastery can not withdraw itself entirely from it, but it only slightly feels the transforming power of the times-spirit. 4. Its power over men is not an absolute one. Some, especially individuals of energetic character and determined mind, resist its influences, and sometimes endeavor, with success, to swim against its stream. Many combat the times-spirit which they hate. Many more, vexed and defiant, repel its rule. The world's history is determined only in part by the times spirit. The individual freedom of men, as well as the times spirit, leaves its impress on the history of the world, and in it another spirit besides that of the times reveals itself to us. The latter we recognize only where the spirit of the masses moves. Hence the times-spirit does not fill the whole of human nature, and is not identical with the mind or spirit of man in general.-5. But neither can the changes of the times-spirit be explained by the play of caprice. That change is not like the varying pictures of a revolving kaleidoscope. Rather is there an intrinsic connection between the character of a preceding and of a succeeding section of time; we may perceive an organic succession of ages, and again an organic succession of phases of the times within the same age, which strongly reminds us of the succession of the age-stages in the life of man. The transformation of the times-spirit, too, begins with childhood, and rises to the height of youthful consciousness, to subsequently, after wise work and careful preservation, sink again into aging routine and prudent calculation, and to prepare for a new revolution. In all this there is regularity and law, not chance and caprice. A great many modern philosophers have endeavored to discover this law. Hegel's endeavor to find it in the dialectic movement of the faculty of thought necessarily failed, because human faculties are manifold, and because the self-conscious mind of thinkers does not at all always determine the direction of the masses. The presentiments of Fourier and the speculation of Krause

"Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten nennt,

Das ist der Herren eigner Geist." [What the gentlemen call the spirit of the times, is their own spirit.]-And, indeed, men frequently palm off their own spirit for the times-spirit; sometimes they deceive themselves about it, and sometimes they wish to deceive others about it. But the true times-spirit is something different from

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the sum of separate spirits. If it were only the alone ruled as a power superordinated over indisum of separate spirits, the fact that the same in- vidual men and binding individual men, the dividuals follow this current of the times-spirit world's history would be like the growth of to-day, and to-morrow perhaps an entirely oppo- a plant; individual freedom would be oppressed site current, would remain entirely unexplained. | by its weight; there would be no deeds, no works Their individual inclinations and opinions remain of men peculiar, but only joint works of the gensometimes the same, notwithstanding they allow eral human mind. But the times-spirit is only one themselves to be carried away by the new current. of the moving forces; in the struggle with that Under the cover of their own roof, they do not force, the spirit of tradition and of traditional hesitate to give expression to their opposition to, authority asserts itself; side by side with it works and heartfelt dislike of, the course which they the special spirit of the nationality of a definite publicly pay homage to and obey. With these, people, of dynasties and families, but above all, of therefore, their change of attitude is not arbitrary. remarkable individual men. From the reciprocal It is not these gentlemen's own spirit that calls struggle and strife, action and interaction, of all forth the spirit of the times. Moreover, if the human forces, proceed all world-historical results. times-spirit were only the sum of individual spir--But the times-spirit is one of the most important its, it would not be possible to explain why the spirit of the times is so widely propagated, and yet seems specially powerful now in one country, and now in another. So, too, would remain unexplained the intrinsic connection of the movements of the times-spirit with one another, and the succession of its changes in great periods of time from age to age, a connection and succession which extend far beyond the brief lives of individual men, and which, therefore, can not be measured by the standard of individual men, nor be dependent on individual men.- Lastly, if the times-spirit were nothing but the sum of individual minds or spirits, the many-sided struggle of the individual with the spirit of the times would be inconceivable; and yet that struggle is fought out frequently by individual men with themselves and within themselves, and not merely with other men. — But if the times-spirit be not the sum of individual minds or spirits; if, rather, there be unity in its nature and development, its cause must be looked for only in humanity as a whole. Only on the supposition that humanity as a unit has a psychic aggregate bent or aggregate disposition of its own, an aggregate destiny of its own, and therefore an aggregate development of its own, can the times-spirit be explained; and then it is explainable as the orderly development of the soul-life of humanity. And so it is indeed. The world's history is the documentary proof that there is such a thing as a development of humanity, a development which progresses through great lifeperiods in organic sequences. The world's history and the times-spirit are nearly related and closely connected phenomena. The times-spirit accompanies the world's history in the paths of its development, and exercises its unceasing influence on the shaping of that history. The general character and spirit which, in the different periods and ages of the world's history, assumed a definite form, were once, when events were still, so to speak, in their fluid state, to a great extent, the spirit of the times. The world's history is development behind us, development in the past, succession that is past. The times-spirit is the development of the human mind in the pres ent. But the times-spirit is certainly not the only thing that determines the world's history. If it

and efficient of the forces which determine the world's history. By the psychologic law of ordered change, which is innate, as a common faculty, in the human race, the human race is spurred on to gradual development and perfection, and guided to its destiny. By the times-spirit, to which God has borne testimony, before the mind of man, God, with far-stretching rein, guides the course of the world's history, and carries humanity unceasingly forward. Once the great significance of the times-spirit is recognized, men will revere it as something sublime, as something divinely human, and look upon those who, ever turned toward the eternal and unchangeable, put a low estimate on the changes of the times-spirit, as short-sighted and unwise. The manifoldness of human life in common and the freedom of human development, are instigated and led by the changes of the times-spirit. — III. What, we may now ask, should be the attitude of the statesman toward this great intellectual power? 1. First, he is obliged carefully to notice the signs of the times, and to study the spirit of the times in which he is called to work. The question, What time is it? is always eminently important; for not at every hour you wish, can what you wish be done. Everything has its time, and the man who at the wrong time, whether too early or too late, undertakes great things, will generally succumb under difficulties, and his endeavors will remain without result.—Then, again, the present world must first answer the question, In what worldperiod do we live? What is the fundamental character of our age? The world of our day is not clear on this point. But this much, I think, can be confidently asserted: The so-called modern world-period, in which a new revolution of the great wheel of the world's history is going on, has still an aspiring youthful character. Humanity has not yet reached the height of its aggregate life. The immeasurable results of the modern sciences and the whole political movement of the time bear testimony to the masculine spirit of modern humanity, with its will to become conscious of itself, and to shape itself in freedom. Ours is a great creative age, more conscious and more free than any former world-period. Hence, in the spirit of this our world-period, a liberal

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