IDEOLOGY UTOPIA - Studyplace

92 Ideology and Utopia
content with the mystic's self-satisfied disregard for history
as .. mere history." One may admit that human life is always
something more than it was discovered to be in anyone
historical period or under any given set of social conditions,
and even that after these have been accounted for there
still remains an eternal, spiritual realm beyond history, which
is never quite subsumed under history itself and which puts
meaning into history and into social experience. We should
not conclude from this that the function of history is to furnish
a record of what man is not, but rather we should
regard it as the matr~~~!.~~.i!L!\'hJl:P. tnan·s.~s~~llt!.~.1 nature
is e~'p!~~:e~. Tlieascent of human beings from mere p~wns
of1i.lstory to the stature of men proceeds and becomes mtelligible
in the course of the variation in the norms, the forms
and the works of mankind, in the course of the change in
institutions and collective aims, in the course of its changing
assumptions and points of view, in terms of which each
social-historical subject becomes aware of himself and acquires
an appreciation of his past. There is, of course, the
disposition more and more to regard all of these phenomena
as symptoms and to integrate them into a system whose unity
and meaning it becomes our task to understand. And even
if it be granted that mystical experience is the only adequate
means for revealing man's ultimate nature to himself, still
it must be admitted that the ineffable element at which the
mystics aim must necessarily bear some relation to social
and historical reality. In th~finaL~~~.ly~.i~ .~~.~~c~~~ t.hat
mould historical and socialre~H.ty s0Ip:~1l0w also aetermine
u..i3-ri's· own destiny. May· it riot be'possible that the ecstatic
Ielement in human experience which in the nature of the
Icase is never directly revealed or expressed, and the meaning
of which can never be fully communicated, can be discovered
through the traces which it leaves on the path of history,
and thus be disclosed to us.
: This point of view, which is based without doubt on a par-
~' ticular attitude towards historical and social reality, reveals
both the possibilities and the limits inherent in it for the
understanding of history and social life. Because of its conempt
for history, a mystical view, which regards history from
an other-worldly standpoint, runs the risk of overlooking
whatever important lessons history has to offer. A true uIl.der-