«——[·Preface·] ——»
The history of Britain has been about 1600 years from the fifth century AD, and over a long period of time, the British state has gradually formed and improved, and the British nation has gradually formed and developed. The convening of the General Assembly by Edward I, later known as the Model Parliament, was the beginning of the English Parliament. Britain went through the historical period of the Anglo-Saxon states, the Age of the Seven Kingdoms, the Wessex dynasty, the partition of Denmark, and the Norman conquest.
«——[·The Fate of Mankind.]——»
At this point, we can conclude our investigation just right, and these "reflections", by working to determine, are not the distant future of the British Empire, but the task of determining destiny to the present, just as we have considered the relationship of the British Empire to the fate of past empires, pausing for a moment to end its relationship with the fate of mankind.
For the ancient world, man left a happy and golden age in the desert of time, Rousseau believed that mankind began from the wrong path and moved away from the path of peace, captivated by the melancholy or despair of Virgil and his master of poetry and speculation, Titus Lucresius.
This conception of human destiny is an infinite step backwards, with the Garden of Eden receding behind the Garden of Eden, losing Paradise behind the Lost Paradise, meeting us in the undated past, in the early history of humanity, now as a myth, now as a religious or philosophical creed.
From the Baltic Sea to the Indian Sea, from the farthest east to the western islands. Beyond this radiant past, even the vision of a dwelling abode waiting the death of souls seems dim and offensive, like the Etruscan legend of the Land of Dusk, or the reign of the shadow that Achilles loathed beyond any mortal suffering.
But the memory or imagination of this distant land, the light of heaven forever falls on this land, Asgard of the Goths, the Akkadian dream of the sinful land ruled by the Yellow Emperor, the reign of Saturn, with the passage of age, power and life energy, finally embalmed in the cold and crystal cuteness of poetry.
Bright mansions, Alicia groves, await souls when they die. Heaven closes around the earth like a protective smile, the hope of this paradise restored in the stars and the new Garden of Eden, for Dante and his time, it is only the light of the earth, and humanity is rapidly advancing towards the desire, hope and certainty of the terrestrial paradise that awaits the race in the near or distant future.
Thus, as the divine inner in the human soul deepens, the desires of his heart become closer and closer to the desires of the souls of the world, and the power of memory decreases and becomes hope. Humans are thrown from hallucination to hallucination, becoming sensitive to the least hints of reality.
But these visions of the Garden of Eden, whether in the distant past, in interstellar space, or in the near future, share some common features. From the far back to the far front, the dream changed, as if the Northern Lights had moved from the horizon to the horizon, but it was still a dream.
The earthly paradise of social reformers, Saint Simeon or Fourier, a world without war, dedicated to agriculture and commerce, or a world of philosophical evolutionists, a world of countless happy altruists, from the bathroom to the breakfast room, illuminated and illuminated by their healthy and mutual smiles.
This differs from the early fantasies of Asgard and the Brest Islands, not in the higher aristocracy and reason, but in the weakening of beauty and poetry. Dreams of endless progress are as futile as dreams of endless regression.
Literary and philosophical critics often point out how ineffective efforts to depict perfection and long-term happiness are compared to depicting pain and endless grief, even if Dante or Milton took on the task.
This contrast is not due to shaky imagination, nor to the fall of the human heart. They are the recognition of the dark unconscious, in the sincerity of the vision it forever transcends consciousness, in the life of man the truth does not lie in happiness, for the soul imprisoned in time and space, whether between the stars or on this earth, perfect peace is a mockery.
But in time, pain is familiar to the soul, suffering is the door of truth, and as Plato affirmed by Socrates, the highest moment of happiness is negative. They are forgotten moments, cloaks of time falling off, whether from the stress of pain or pleasure, or simply fatigue.
Therefore, people congratulate joy with stammering lips, but the response of grief to grief is rapid, heartfelt, and unconsciously recognized; Thus, in the portrait of heaven, art fails, but in the portrait of hell, art succeeds.
Eternity is not finding rest in time, nor in space, where infinity can find rest, and when illusions follow the illusion of loss, the human soul does, but more thoroughly aware of the ineffable miracle of the only reality, eternity.
«——[The Four Periods of British History.]——»
This deepening of the concept of human destiny, beginning with infinity and infinity, is one of the most profound and important features of our time. Its domination of art, literature, and religion can no longer escape us.
This is the dominant note of the last of the four great eras or eras in which the history of modern European thought splits on an ever-rising scale. A brief review of these four eras will best prepare us to consider Britain's current position and its relationship of empire to the actual condition of Europe and humanity.
The First Age was controlled by holy ideals. The Europeans of that era were visionaries. For him, the invisible world is more real than seeing, the existence of art and poetry, but to decorate the soul's pilgrimage from earth to heaven.
The New Jerusalem that Terturian saw night after night descended at sunset; the City of God, where St. Augustine glistened in the smoke of world fires in the era of Alaric and Attila, Vandal and Gothic, Frank and Huns; The day of wrath and judgment that later likewise looked forward to the arrival of spring was just a stage of pervasive desire, a cry of passion.
But when the ascetic fervor of the saints is thwarted by the joy of life, the courage of the crusaders is broken on the Muslim spear, and the scholar tirelessly pursues harmonious, conciliatory words of reason and faith, the illusion that captivates the era disappears, and his enthusiasm is no less than that of the crusaders piercing the growing doubts, discord, fears, completely reduced to ruins, accepted defeats or despair.
With the advent of the second era, a new illusion appeared, the Vine of religious freedom. Rome taught the ideals of the world, on which saints, crusaders and scholars built hope, turned to ashes – but wouldn't the human soul find resting haven from Roman freedom in the pure faith of primitive times?
The last scholars were suppressed by papal decrees and awareness of a desperate task, and the first new scholars are ushering in four centuries of world drama.
The world-historical significance of the Reformation lies in the European intellectual effort to pierce through, at least in the realm of religion, closer to the truth. The successive stages of this struggle can be compared to the vast tetralogy.
Since religious freedom is the Vine of Reformation drama, the illusion of eternity is now embodied in political freedom. Let mankind be free, let the people of the entire earth use all his abilities without restriction, and the light of heaven will once again fill all the dark places in the world! This is the new incarnation, the good news that announces the French Revolution and the Third Age.
In this ideal, the belief that the French Girondins died is the most perfect expression. Condorcet and his team died of what faith, some died from poison, some died from swords, some died from guillotinions, some died from battle, but all died of violent deaths.
In the joy of the death of a martyr, which sanctifies the whole life, it is a miracle, a moment of unease, but convinced that it is peaceful in some deeper reconciliation. Look, how strong their faith is! Marie Antoinette had her faith, and her priest's prohibition was: "When in doubt or pain, think of Calvary." ”
However, the Queen's hair turned gray and her spirit despaired. Queen Girondins climb on the scaffolding and love love and life as much as Marie Antoinette – what makes her nervous?
It is the star of the future, how free their souls are, the nobility shines in the eyes of these people, the light embarks on their doom, the immortal tranquility, these martyrs bear witness to the purity and sublime of two other ideals no less than the death of saints and reformers!
They fought March, which was also their death hymn, and Shelley composed it, singing choral hymns, visions of the future of the world, closed off Greece. The Girondin's belief in life and death is hope, a faith that slowly emerged throughout eighteenth-century Europe, that is, political freedom as a regenerative being, as the salvation of the world.
Voltaire announced the arrival of the Third Age - "blessed are young people, because their eyes will see it" - and on the ruins of the Bastille, Charles James Fox saw its rise. He wrote to a friend, "Isn't this the greatest event in the history of the world!" ”
Its presence shook Goethe's firm heart like a reed. Wordsworth, Schiller, Chateaubriand promised their elephants - at one time! Freedom of Vine, eternal illusion, dream of the human heart! First France, then Europe, then the whole planet - freedom!
This is the belief of the demise of the Girondins, bequeathing to the nineteenth century the theory of human destiny, which informed its poetry, speculative science, and systems philosophy.
For the ideals of the Third Age, freedom, knowledge, world alliance became the ideals of the first and second ages. Politically, in religious freedom, there is no panacea for human turmoil. The new paradise and the new earth announced by Voltaire disappeared, just like the city that Tertulian saw after sunset.
If the greatest dreams of science are realized, and all the moral and political goals of Girondinism, if the foundations of life and existence are uncovered, if the curves of each star are traced, its laws are determined, and its structure is analyzed, if the revolution of this Earth from the first hour, and all the chronicles of the driving systems in space, are brought about by some kind of miracle that we examine - it will still displease the spirit, just as these crystal walls surrounded its infinity for the first time.
«——[·Epilogue.]——»
In summary, it is not difficult to conclude that the special geographical conditions of Britain and Europe have made the British Isles extremely vulnerable to foreign military power, and the British aristocracy is not easy to collect.
The aristocracy was able to contain the royal power through parliament, and often took advantage of the change of dynasty to seek more power, which to a certain extent contributed to the emergence and development of the constitutional monarchy and the bourgeois industrial revolution.
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