Race and Language

The subject of biological race for Spengler is a contentious one. Although he accepts “race” as real, he does so from, naturally, the prior learned facts of his studies, matching it against its own dualistic counter part as can be expected. Spengler opens 5^th chapter in volume 2 by denouncing the biological race of his time and by extension ours:

“If, here and there, in earlier time a new religion, a new ornamentation, a new architecture, or a new script appeared, the question that it raised presented itself to the investigator thus – What was the name of the people who produced the phenomenon? This enunciation of the problem is peculiar to the Western spirit and the present-day cast of that spirit; but it is so false at every point that the picture that it evokes of the course of events must necessarily be erroneous. “The people” as the absolute basic form in which men are historically effective, the original home, the original settlement, the migrations of “the” peoples – all this is a reflection of the vibrant idea expressed in the “Nation” of 1789, of the “Volk” of 1813, both of  which, in  last analysis, are derived from the self-assuredness of England and Puritanism.”

The premise here is the denunciation of the scientific idea of race, that race is something quantifiable and inherent genes determine the direction and character of civilisation, which Spengler propounds by arguing from a conservative point of view that the idea of a popular “peoples” is a modern idea and belongs to a time no earlier than the English civil war. Now, race is something we can quantify, should we wish to ascribe the word race to genetic differences between clusters of people, but with Spengler his definition of race is something far more closely associated to one’s relation to the land itself. There is not a multitude of peoples, but simply “man”, whose destinies are determined by the relation of family members, of blood bonds and, like the plant, takes root in the landscape. No Arabian nomad ever trekked beyond the sands to the Indus or Rhine, for even wandering tribes are tethered to the soil by their blood. The primitive organisations we are familiar with: tribes, clans and families, each possess Spengler’s “race” whilst also possessing the opposite feeling of “language”, language of tongue, gesture, mien and symbol for communication. What we have here is the animal-like tendency to liberate oneself from the land and roam free. Race and Language are therefore a binary alike to peasants and burghers, soul and intellect, time and space.

Race is the impression of all bodily characters perceived by conscious creatures. It is like Nature (see Sterility, an it outside of perception and channeled by it. But as our bodies grow and create and eject new and dead cells, all that remains of the cycle of renewal in our bodies is a feeling that can become descriptive of race, but only as a sum of its parts and not something greater than it. We humans will use our eyes to see “race”, but animals equally have a multitude of senses for perceiving it on their own accord, namely scent.

And despite Race being of the Cosmic order, corresponding to the plant organism, plants themselves, not being conscious, have race but do not know it (obviously), so we see, in meadows and forests, the flora of the world will spread and mingle with each of their kind by extending upwards into the animal realm where they can borrow the senses of higher beings, where their bright colours and smells and tastes can be perceived and enjoyed and, in doing so, propagate the plant’s race.

And of language, there is a fundamental requirement for an other, to communicate said language to. Plants have no such communication, but every waking moment of an animal’s life radiates language on several orders: a cat’s stare, a dog’s pant, a peacock spreading its tail and bear cubs playing, as well as ourselves. To be more precise, language can be split between its mere state of waking-being, that is, expression language which is conveyed to actualize oneself before witnesses, and a connection of waking being, the language understood by definite beings as communication language.

“To understand one another, to hold “conversation,” to speak to a “thou,” supposes, therefore, a sense of meanings in the other that corresponds to that in oneself. Expression-language before witnesses merely proves the presence of an “I,” but communication-language postulates a “thou.” The “I” is that which speaks, and the “thou” that which is meant to understand the speech of the “I.” For primitives a tree, a stone, or a cloud can be a “thou.” Every deity is a “thou.” In fairy-tales there is nothing that cannot hold converse with men, and we need only look at our own selves in moments of furious irritation or of poetic excitement to realize that anything can become a “thou” for us even to-day. And it is by some “thou” that we first came to the knowledge of an “I.” “I,” therefore, is a designation for the fact that a bridge exists to some other being.”

To summarise, Spengler’s view of race is a lot more traditionally conservative than today’s popular understanding of race: where race is inherent in you as being part of an ethnicity or a wider genetic cluster with cultural background and political interests. That side is very much real, but race for Spengler is tied to the land; race is within the peasant and the noble aristocrat and the king of the country who have passed inheritance of their plots from generation to generation. Race is within even the Abels of nomadic groups, so long as they understand, like all animals do, that they have a home and an outside which is not to be trespassed. And language, which is still possessed by those with race to varying degrees, is the symbolism of complex cities: merchants and last men and emperors who belong nowhere and everywhere, delimited by the land, though the most sterile of them no doubt forget they had a race when their intellect makes them high on pride.