based on the covenant made between God and man, which as a result gives meaning to all human actions.71
When outlining the history of mankind, Hess openly refers to the concepts originating from the observation of natural life, fashionable at the time. Generally, both in the natural world and among animals, there is a permanent fight for survival, in which the weaker element perishes and the stronger remains. The history of humankind has been very similar, though it had an element that does not occur in the world of nature. This element driving and, in a way, determining human activity was the ultimate goal of mankind, i.e. universal fusion – creating an entire organism made up of different parts (members) influencing each other which can only exist within this entirety. For Hess, the history of humanity is naturally understandable, in a way automatic, covering both the sphere of human biological and social life,72 with natural permanent ←49 | 50→rivalry, or war. However, building the sphere of his social life, man is able to partially anticipate the state of permanent conflict and introduce the creative state of peace, beneficial for everyone. But this requires the combination and fusion of cultures. As part of the fusion, different human races (types73) which normally compete with each other are no longer adverse opponents but indispensable members of the humanistic whole – human communis. Hess perceives history as the process of fusion of different human races. At the same time, this process, in modern times initiated by the French Revolution, ultimately destroyed the idea (present since the Middle Ages) of universalism based exclusively on religious belonging to the great community of christianitas and ignoring any divisions into nations, i.e. anti-national. According to Hess, that utopian vision of unity in anti-national universalism proved to be just an idealistic dream, not having anything in common with the real mechanism of social life. That is why in the modern times it has been discredited together with weakening the role of religion and the Church in social life.74 Social universalism must, therefore, be based on accepting the diversity of human races (types), and individual nations which together make a humanistic organism are parts of it.
The vision of mankind presented by Hess has a cosmic dimension: “Like the general universal cosmic life which finds its termination in it, and the individual microcosmic life in which all buds and fruits of the spirit finally ripen, Humanity is a living organism, of which races and peoples are the members. In every organism, changes are continually going on. Some, quite prominent in the embryonic stage, disappear in the later development. There are organs, on the other hand, hardly noticeable in the earlier existence of the organism, which become important only when the organism reaches the end of its development.”75 ←50 | 51→Using analogies to the growing organism, the author describes social history in which at particular stages of development/maturation of humanity, just like in the case of an organism, some members (nations) gain considerable advantage over others in early stages of maturation, growing stronger and even exceeding their natural shape as part of the whole organism. In this sense, they begin to considerably dominate other nations, and history seems to the author to be full of examples of such nations “expanded” at a certain stage of history. This vision is the vision promoted by Hegel, or whom history is the procession of the Spirit, represented by particular peoples (nations): first Greeks, then Romans, and finally Germans. But while basically agreeing with Hegel’s concept, Hess perceives the dominance of some peoples over others as the immaturity or the whole human organism. However, this organism is characterized by a constant process of maturation, which is gradually removing those outgrowths which are disproportionate from its perspective and not harmonizing with others, leading to the achievement of proper development of the total normal maturation of all the members, i.e. all the nations making the entirety of humanitarian communitas. According to Hess, the stage of humanity reaching the proper state of growth is taking place in his time, and the author assigns a significant role in this maturation to Jews with their culture and religion. The Jewish nation has amazing livelihood and resistance to the maladies consuming mankind. In the whole history of European races, it was Jews that preserved their identity all the time, resisting the winds of history, which blew out many others, seemingly permanently dominant, nations/peoples. In the humanistic organism the Jewish nation is the creative force and power, which according to the author, it shares equally with the German one.76 Both nations currently have something that is the flywheel of all the changes and the growth of the organism of humanity: freedom and progress. Mankind matures to freedom and is characterized by constant progress in the dynamism of transformations. With the French Revolution, history first revealed in the universal awareness the right to freedom, and freedom became in this dimension an indispensable element of all social changes. These changes, in turn, always lead to progress, and history is constant growth – there is no place for regression or return to what has already been. Hess cannot accept conservatism in this regard. Progress and freedom become a challenge faced by mankind and contribute to the creation of a modern concept of nation, because with the formation of the nation, progress and freedom reach ←51 | 52→their most mature form.77 The history of mankind is always connected with the dichotomy of freedom, which man desires and which makes their essence, and the opposite necessity present in the world surrounding man. Freedom cannot be reconciled with necessity: they are mutually exclusive. This problem mostly refers to men, because on the one hand, they are related to the necessary laws of nature, which determine his biological life, and thus, a human must meet their physiological needs simply to sustain their living functions. But on the other hand, man seems a free creature, endowed with free will, which is in its essence completely autonomous – in this sense, being human is fulfilled in the postulate of being free. An expression of human freedom is the sphere of social life and interpersonal relations, in which the freedom of action based on the will (desire) and the necessity resulting from nature constantly confront each other. Hess can see this conflict also in the contemporary times, when it has the form of, among others, discussion referring to the dilemma of humanism and humanity vs nationalism. In the pattern in which the necessity-based character of all interpersonal relations dominates, the primary assumption is that human activities are not determined by a moral factor driving man to engage in certain actions but rather based on internal natural power subjected to universal, cosmic laws and rules. As Hess emphasizes, it greatly affects the formation of the concept of organic approach of humanity. Humanity as a natural organism is subject to natural cosmic laws that fully determine its activities. The author calls this concept natural pure fatalism, in which the history of individual people follows the laws and rules that also refer to the whole world and do not differ at all from the global history. Human life subjected to natural worldly laws goes on in the same rhythm as the “life” of the whole universe, which excludes any freedom of action and reduces any morality. This vision of humanism and humanity is essentially amoral and slavish (due to the exclusion of freedom).78 Hess finds it hard to agree with such total fatalism, because it practically reduces the essence of human to their physical (physiological) dimension, treating any moral and ethical aspects of their attitudes and activities as meaningless: human activity is ←52 | 53→determined physiologically, not morally, and cannot be assessed from the moral point of view. The opposite concept treats humanity as an autonomous form, completely independent of the world of nature, which coexists with the external world and in a way is related to it, but this relationship does not determine the essence of humanity and all human activities. In such a vision of a human, the laws of nature also apply, but apart from them, there is an area of freedom, and people are free in what they do. In the general dimension of development of social life, humanity as a natural organism has reached the level of development at which they have practically made themselves independent from the world of nature and its determinants; the natural fatalism of the world has virtually no impact on mankind and does not contribute to any advancement of humanity. Development assumes freedom and morality, which are the basis for building any humanitarian and national attitudes of individuals. In this vision, Hess can see the special importance of religion, which has always formed the appropriate moral attitudes, fostering development and progress. Judaism is unique in this aspect, because it emphasizes this moral aspect with particular strength and – what seems of key importance – absolutely derives moral laws from the divine source. Human’s morality and freedom grow out of the covenant with God, they are God’s gift. Thus, first, they go beyond the natural order of the world, because they do not have an essential relation to the laws of nature and do not grow out of them; second, they make the sphere of human activity sacred, justifying freedom as a