the whole, but only superficial fractions as "the world" — has become a little star amongst millions of solar systems.
The extension of the historical world-picture makes it even more necessary in this Culture than in any other to distinguish between the everyday self-attunements of ordinary people and that extreme self-attunement of which only the highest minds are capable, and which even in them holds only for moments. The difference between the historical view-field of Themistocles and that of an Attic husbandman is probably very small, but this difference is already immense as between Henry VI and a hind of his day,[1] and as the Faustian Culture mounts up and up, the power of self-focusing attains to such heights and depths that the circle of adepts grows ever smaller and smaller. In fact, there is formed a sort of pyramid of possibilities, in which individuals are graded according to their endowments; every individual, according to his constitution, stands at the level which he is capable at his best focus of holding. But it follows from this that between Western men there are limitations to the possibilities of reciprocal understanding of historical life-problems, limitations that do not apply to other Cultures, at any rate in such fateful rigour as they do to ours. Can a workman to-day really understand a peasant? Or a diplomat a craftsman? The historico-geographical horizon that determines for each of them the questions worth asking and the form in which these are asked is so different from the horizons of the others that what they can exchange is not a communication, but passing remarks. It is, of course, the mark of the real appraiser of man that he understands how "the other man" is adjusted and regulates his intercourse with him accordingly (as we all do in talking to children), but the art of appraising in this sense some man of the past (say Henry the Lion or Dante), of living oneself into his history-picture so thoroughly that his thoughts, feelings, and decisions take on a character of self-evidence, is, owing to the vast difference between the one's and the other's waking consciousness, so rare that up to the eighteenth century it was not even seen that the historian ought to attempt it. Only since 1800 has it become a desideratum for the writing of history, and it is one very seldom satisfied at that.
The typically Faustian separation of human history, as such, from the far wider history of the world has had the resuJt that since the end of the Baroque our world-picture has contained several horizons disposed one behind the other in as many planes. For the exploration of these, individual sciences, more or less overtly historical in character, have taken shape. Astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, one after the other follow up the destinies of the star-world, the earth's crust, life, and man, and only then do we come to the "world"-history — as it is still called even to-day — of the higher Cultures, to which, again, are attached the histories of the several cultural elements, family
- ↑ The Emperor Henry VI reigned 1190-7. — Tr.
