36 WILHELM DILTHEY 2 The selections that follow are a cross section of recent Eu- ropean historicism. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has been identified before. Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was the most influential Italian philosopher and man of letters of his age; he was also a practicing historian and an active political figure. José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1956) en- joyed as great a reputation and influence in Spain and the Spanish-speaking world as Croce did in Italy. R. G. Col- lingwood (1889-1943) did not occupy as eminent a place in his country as these men did in theirs, but he was the ‘most original and stimulating historical mind in recent Eng- Ush philosophy. All these men, despite individual differences, subscribed to some form of historicisms all of them also tended to com- bine historicism with some kind of idealism in the tradition of Kant and Hegel. History was a “spiritual” realm, by which they meant that the ultimate constituents of the his- torical world were human thoughts, purposes, motives, and actions, not natural, social, or institutional factors, and that the aim of a genuine historical work was to reconstruct these “spiritual” facts in their original meaning, “It is time,” Mr. Barraclough concluded, “for a recon- sideration of the foundations of historical thought.” It was Dilthey’s ambition, as I have said, to reconsider these foun- dations. “The Dream”—a lecture delivered at the occasion of his seventieth birthday—does not, of course, give an idea of his work along these lines or of the profound influence Dilthey has had on modern thought. Unfortunately, no major work of his is available in English. Yet brief and “poetic” as the dream is, it repays a close reading. It is a mild intellectual nightmare, “a philosophically engendered anxiety.” And it conveys two significant strands of Dilthey’s mind: (1) Historicism as the key to the final liberation of man from theology, philosophy, and natural science; and (2) the failure to work out a universal conceptual system for history or philosophy. THE DREAM . Philosophy is split into three major factions represen’ 1 ‘y the three groupings appearing in the dream: (1) terialism or positivism, (2) the idealism of freedom, anc (3) classical or objective idealism. (In the arts, this divi- sion would roughly correspond to the three types of natu- valism or realism, romanticism, and classicism.) Nothing can heal this split. “We see the pure light of truth only in various broken rays.” What remains is to see the “truth” in different perspectives, to work out a typology of the hu- man mind in history, or to achieve a semblance of synthesis by viewing the three major types in different historical con- texts. “To contemplate all the aspects in their totality is denied to us.” The dream also reveals the transitional place lich Dilthey occupies in recent intellectual history: his link with the Hegelian tradition of “surrendering to the great objec- tive forces” in history and his break-through to the existen- tialist thesis that “what man is, only his history tells.” WILHELM DILTHEY THE DREAM? I have endeavored to present methods of research to my students and have attempted to develop in them the ability to analyze reality. This power of analysis is the key to all philosophizing and historical thinking. I have no solution for the enigma of life; what I would like to transmit to my students is the temper of life which has developed in me as a result of my reflecting on the meaning of historical con- sciousness. This tone or temper of life I would like to ex: press again today. But every expression is either too difficult or too cold. My friend Wildenbruch, however, has shown me a way. How deeply honored a man feels when praised by a poet! The poet Wildenbruch has called forth the poet in me and therefore he is responsible, if the ashbeap begins © In William Kluback, Wilhelm Dilthey’s Philosophy of His- tory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956) pp. 103-9; reprinted by permission of the Columbia University Press.38 ‘WILBELM DILTHEY to glow again and I attempt to express my consciousness of life which has‘evolved out of many years of philosophical concer. I shall not express my thoughts in verse; never- theless, allow me some poetic license. This happened more than a decade ago. One clear sum- mer evening I arrived at my friend’s castle, Klein-Oels. As usual our philosophical conversation lasted deep into the night, and still resounded in my mind when I undressed in the old familiar bedroom. I faced Volpato’s fine etching of the School of Athens which hung over the bed. It was grati- fying to visualize how the harmonious spirit of the divine Raphael blended the life and death struggle of hostile phil- osophical systems into a peaceful discourse. About these gentle, related figures there hovered an atmosphere of Peace which, for the first time at the dawn of ancient cul- ture, ‘strove to harmonize powerfully conflicting thoughts. In the noblest intellects of the Renaissance the same at- mosphere was present, Tired, I fell asleep, Instantly an alert dream life possessed me. I dreamed of Raphael's picture and of our conversa- tion. In my dream, the figures of the philosophers came to life; in the distance, I saw on the left a long line of men, in varied garments of succeeding centuries, approach the temple of the philosophers. Whenever a philosopher passed and tuned his face toward me, I tried to recognize him. There was Bruno, Descartes, Leibniz, and so many others just as I had imagined them in the light of their portraits. They ascended the steps and, as they did so, the barriers of the Temple collapsed. The newcomers mixed with the Greek philosophers. Then something happened which I did not expect even in a dream, As if driven by an inner necessity, they hastened toward each other to as- semble themselves in groups. At frst the movement pressed to the right where the mathematician, Archimedes, drew his circles and where the astronomer, Ptolemy, was recog- nizable by the globe he wore. Then there gathered all those thinkers, who based their explanation of the world upon the material solidity of the universal physical nature. Pro- ceeding from the lower to the higher, they tried to find a ‘THE DREAM 39 single causality in the universe which could be derived from the dependent laws of nature; they subordinated the spirit to matter. They have limited our knowledge to what is known only through the methods of the natural sciences. In this group of materialists and positivists I also recognized d'Alembert with his fine features and ironic smile which seemed to mock the dreams of the metaphysicians. I also saw Comte, the systematizer of positivism, to whom a group of thinkers from all nations listened devotedly, Another group pressed toward the center where Socrates and the noble figure of the old and god-like Plato were distinguishable. Socrates and Plato have tried to establish the knowledge of a supersensual world order based on the consciousness of the divine in the human. I also saw St. Augustine, whose heart was so passionately seeking God; around him clustered many philosophizing theologians. I listened to their conversation seeking to reconcile the ideal- ism of personality, which is the essence of Christianity, with the teachings of the two venerable Greeks. Then Descartes separated himself from the mathematical naturalists—Des- cartes, whose delicate figure worn out by the power of thought was drawn as if by an inner force toward the ideal- ists of freedom and personality. The whole circle opened as soon as the slightly stooped, slightly built Kant, his fea- tures hardened by the strain of thought, approached with his three-cornered hat and cane. This was the great Kant who elevated the idealism of freedom to the level of critical consciousness, thus reconciling it with empirical knowledge. Walking energetically toward Kant came Schiller, the poet of the idealism of freedom, whose melancholy face reflected deep thought, a poetic idealizing intuition, and the divina- tion of his tragic fate. Fichte and Carlyle approached; Ranke, Guizot, and other great historians seemed to be lis- tening attentively to them. A strange shudder seized me when I saw together with them a friend of my youth, Hein- rich von Treitschke. The two groups had hardly assembled when from the left converged thinkers of all nations around Pythagoras and Heraclitus, the Brst men to intuit the divine harmony of the universe. Giordano Bruno, Spinoza and Leibniz were