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THEORY & HISTORY

OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

by

BENEDETTO CROCE

authorized translation

BY

DOUGLAS AINSLIE


LONDON

GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY

1921




PREFACE

TO THE FIRST ITALIAN EDITION


Almost all the writings which compose the present treatise were printed
in the proceedings of Italian academies and in Italian reviews between
1912 and 1913. Since they formed part of a general scheme, their
collection in book form presented no difficulties. This volume has
appeared in German under the title _Zur Theorie und Geschichte der
Historiographie_ (Tübingen, Mohr, 1915).

On publishing in book form in Italian, I made a few slight alterations
here and there and added three brief essays, placed as an appendix to
the first part.

The description of the volume as forming the fourth of my _Philosophy
of the Spirit_ requires some explanation; for it does not really form
a new systematic part of the philosophy, and is rather to be looked
upon as a deepening and amplification of the theory of historiography,
already outlined in certain chapters of the second part, namely the
_Logic_. But the problem of historical comprehension is that toward
which pointed all my investigations as to the modes of the spirit,
their distinction and unity, their truly concrete life, which is
development and history, and as to historical thought, which is the
self-consciousness of this life. In a certain sense, therefore, this
resumption of the treatment of historiography on the completion of the
wide circle, this drawing forth of it from the limits of the first
treatment of the subject, was the most natural conclusion that could
be given to the whole work. The character of 'conclusion' both explains
and justifies the literary form of this last volume, which is more
compressed and less didactic than that of the previous volumes.

B. C.

Naples: May 1916




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE


The author himself explains the precise connexion of the present work
with the other three volumes of the _Philosophy of the Spirit_, to
which it now forms the conclusion.

I had not contemplated translating this treatise, when engaged upon
the others, for the reason that it was not in existence in its present
form, and an external parallel to its position as the last, the late
comer of the four masterpieces, is to be found in the fact of its
publication by another firm than that which produced the preceding
volumes. This diversity in unity will, I am convinced, by no means act
as a bar to the dissemination of the original thought contained in its
pages, none of which will, I trust, escape the diligent reader through
the close meshes of the translation.

The volume is similar in format to the _Logic_, the _Philosophy of the
Practical_, and the _Æsthetic_. The last is now out of print, but will
reappear translated by me from the definitive fourth Italian edition,
greatly exceeding in bulk the previous editions.

The present translation is from the second Italian edition, published
in 1919. In this the author made some slight verbal corrections and
a few small additions. I have, as always, followed the text with the
closest respect.


D. A.

The Athenæum, London

November 1920




CONTENTS


    PART I

    THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

        I.   History and Chronicle
       II.   Pseudo-Histories
      III.   History as History of the Universal.
             Criticism of 'Universal History'
       IV.   Ideal Genesis and Dissolution of the 'Philosophy of History'
        V.   The Positivity of History
       VI.   The Humanity of History
      VII.   Choice and Periodization
     VIII.   Distinction (Special Histories) and Division
       IX.   The 'History of Nature' and History

             APPENDICES
        I.   Attested Evidence
       II.   Analogy and Anomaly of Special Histories
      III.   Philosophy and Methodology

    PART II

    CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

        I.   Preliminary Questions
       II.   Græco-Roman Historiography
      III.   Medieval Historiography
       IV.   The Historiography of the Renaissance
        V.   The Historiography of the Enlightenment
       VI.   The Historiography of Romanticism
      VII.   The Historiography of Positivism
     VIII.   The New Historiography. Conclusion

    Index of Names





PART I


THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY


I


HISTORY AND CHRONICLE



I


'Contemporary history' is wont to be called the history of a passage
of time, looked upon as a most recent past, whether it be that of the
last fifty years, a decade, a year, a month, a day, or indeed of the
last hour or of the last minute. But if we think and speak rigorously,
the term 'contemporaneous' can be applied only to that history which
comes into being immediately after the act which is being accomplished,
as consciousness of that act: it is, for instance, the history that
I make of myself while I am in the act of composing these pages; it
is the thought of my composition, linked of necessity to the work
of composition. 'Contemporary' would be well employed in this case,
just because this, like every act of the spirit, is outside time (of
the first and after) and is formed 'at the same time' as the act to
which it is linked, and from which it is distinguished by means of a
distinction not chronological but ideal. 'Non-contemporary history,'
'past history,' would, on the other hand, be that which finds itself
in the presence of a history already formed, and which thus comes into
being as a criticism of that history, whether it be thousands of years
or hardly an hour old.

But if we look more closely, we perceive that this history
already formed, which is called or which we would like to call
'non-contemporary' or 'past' history, if it really is history, that
is to say, if it mean something and is not an empty echo, is also
_contemporary_, and does not in any way differ from the other. As in
the former case, the condition of its existence is that the deed of
which the history is told must vibrate in the soul of the historian,
or (to employ the expression of professed historians) that the
documents are before the historian and that they are intelligible.
That a narrative or a series of narratives of the fact is united
and mingled with it merely means that the fact has proved more
rich, not that it has lost its quality of being present: what were
narratives or judgments before are now themselves facts, 'documents'
to be interpreted and judged. History is never constructed from
narratives, but always from documents, or from narratives that have
been reduced to documents and treated as such. Thus if contemporary
history springs straight from life, so too does that history which
is called non-contemporary, for it is evident that only an interest
in the life of the present can move one to investigate past fact.
Therefore this past fact does not answer to a past interest, but to a
present interest, in so far as it is unified with an interest of the
present life. This has been said again and again in a hundred ways by
historians in their empirical formulas, and constitutes the reason, if
not the deeper content, of the success of the very trite saying that
history is _magister vitæ_.

I have recalled these forms of historical technique in order to remove
the aspect of paradox from the proposition that 'every true history is
contemporary history.' But the justice of this proposition is easily
confirmed and copiously and perspicuously exemplified in the reality
of historiographical work, provided always that we do not fall into
the error of taking the works of the historians all together, or
certain groups of them confusedly, and of applying them to an abstract
man or to ourselves considered abstractly, and of then asking what
present interest leads to the writing or reading of such histories: for
instance, what is the present interest of the history which recounts
the Peloponnesian or the Mithradatic War, of the events connected with
Mexican art, or with Arabic philosophy. For me at the present moment
they are without interest, and therefore for me at this present moment
those histories are not histories, but at the most simply titles of
historical works. They have been or will be histories in those that
have thought or will think them, and in me too when I have thought
or shall think them, re-elaborating them according to my spiritual
needs. If, on the other hand, we limit ourselves to real history, to
the history that one really thinks in the act of thinking, it will be
easily seen that this is perfectly identical with the most personal and
contemporary of histories. When the development of the culture of my
historical moment presents to me (it would be superfluous and perhaps
also inexact to add to myself as an individual) the problem of Greek
civilization or of Platonic philosophy or of a particular mode of
Attic manners, that problem is related to my being in the same way as
the history of a bit of business in which I am engaged, or of a love
affair in which I am indulging, or of a danger that threatens me. I
examine it with the same anxiety and am troubled with the same sense of
unhappiness until I have succeeded in solving it. Hellenic life is on
that occasion present in me; it solicits, it attracts and torments me,
in the same way as the appearance of the adversary, of the loved one,
or of the beloved son for whom one trembles. Thus too it happens or has
happened or will happen in the case of the Mithradatic War, of Mexican
art, and of all the other things that I have mentioned above by way of
example.

Having laid it down that contemporaneity is not the characteristic
of a class of histories (as is held with good reason in empirical
classifications), but an intrinsic characteristic of every history,
we must conceive the relation of history to life as that of _unity_;
certainly not in the sense of abstract identity, but of synthetic
unity, which implies both the distinction and the unity of the terms.
Thus to talk of a history of which the documents are lacking would
appear to be as extravagant as to talk of the existence of something as
to which it is also affirmed that it is without one of the essential
conditions of existence. A history without relation to the document
would be an unverifiable history; and since the reality of history lies
in this verifiability, and the narrative in which it is given concrete
form is historical narrative only in so far as it is a _critical
exposition_ of the document (intuition and reflection, consciousness
and auto-consciousness, etc.), a history of that sort, being without
meaning and without truth, would be inexistent as history. How could
a history of painting be composed by one who had not seen and enjoyed
the works of which he proposed to describe the genesis critically? And
how far could anyone understand the works in question who was without
the artistic experience assumed by the narrator? How could there be a
history of philosophy without the works or at least fragments of the
works of the philosophers? How could there be a history of a sentiment
or of a custom, for example that of Christian humility or of knightly
chivalry, without the capacity for living again, or rather without an
actual living again of these particular states of the individual soul?

On the other hand, once the indissoluble link between life and thought
in history has been effected, the doubts that have been expressed as to
the _certainty_ and the _utility_ of history disappear altogether in
a moment. How could that which is a _present_ producing of our spirit
ever be _uncertain_? How could that knowledge be _useless_ which solves
a problem that has come forth from the bosom of _life_?




II


But can the link between document and narrative, between life and
history, ever be broken? An affirmative answer to this has been given
when referring to those histories of which the documents have been
lost, or, to put the case in a more general and fundamental manner,
those histories whose documents are no longer alive in the human
spirit. And this has also been implied when saying that we all of us in
turn find ourselves thus placed with respect to this or that part of
history. The history of Hellenic painting is in great part a history
without documents for us, as are all histories of peoples concerning
whom one does not know exactly where they lived, the thoughts and
feelings chat they experienced, or the individual appearance of the
works that they accomplished; those literatures and philosophies, too,
as to which we do not know their theses, or even when we possess these
and are able to read them through, yet fail to grasp their intimate
spirit, either owing to the lack of complementary knowledge or because
of our obstinate temperamental reluctance, or owing to our momentary
distraction.

If, in these cases, when that connexion is broken, we can no longer
call what remains history (because history was nothing but that
connexion), and it can henceforth only be called history in the sense
that we call a man the corpse of a man, what remains is not for
that reason nothing (not even the corpse is really nothing). Were
it nothing, it would be the same as saying that the connexion is
indissoluble, because nothingness is never effectual. And if it be not
nothing, if it be something, what is narrative without the document?

A history of Hellenic painting, according to the accounts that have
been handed down or have been constructed by the learned of our times,
when closely inspected, resolves itself into a series of names of
painters (Apollodorus, Polygnotus, Zeuxis, Apelles, etc.), surrounded
with biographical anecdotes, and into a series of subjects for
painting (the burning of Troy, the contest of the Amazons, the battle
of Marathon, Achilles, Calumny, etc.), of which certain particulars
are given in the descriptions that have reached us; or a graduated
series, going from praise to blame, of these painters and their works,
together with names, anecdotes, subjects, judgments, arranged more or
less chronologically. But the names of painters separated from the
direct knowledge of their works are empty names; the anecdotes are
empty, as are the descriptions of subjects, the judgment of approval
or of disapproval, and the chronological arrangement, because merely
arithmetical and lacking real development; and the reason why we do
not realize it in thought is that the elements which should constitute
it are wanting. If those verbal forms possess any significance, we owe
it to what little we know of antique paintings from fragments, from
secondary works that have come down to us in copies, or in analogous
works in the other arts, or in poetry. With the exception, however, of
that little, the history of Hellenic art is, as such, a tissue of empty
words.

We can, if we like, say that it is 'empty of determinate content,'
because we do not deny that when we pronounce the name of a painter
we think of some painter, and indeed of a painter who is an Athenian,
and that when we utter the word 'battle,' or 'Helen,' we think of
a battle, indeed of a battle of hoplites, or of a beautiful woman,
similar to those familiar to us in Hellenic sculpture. But we can
think indifferently of any one of the numerous facts that those names
recall. For this reason their content is indeterminate, and this
indetermination of content is their emptiness.


All histories separated from their living documents resemble these
examples and are empty narratives, and since they are empty they are
without truth. Is it true or not that there existed a painter named
Polygnotus and that he painted a portrait of Miltiades in the Poecile?
We shall be told that it is true, because one person or several
people, who knew him and saw the work in question, bear witness to
its existence. But we must reply that it was true for this or that
witness, and that for us it is neither true nor false, or (which comes
to the same thing) that it is true only on the evidence of those
witnesses--that is to say, for an extrinsic reason, whereas truth
always requires intrinsic reasons. And since that proposition is not
true (neither true nor false), it is not useful either, because where
there is nothing the king loses his rights, and where the elements of a
problem are wanting the effective will and the effective need to solve
it are also wanting, along with the possibility of its solution. Thus
to quote those empty judgments is quite useless for our actual lives.
Life is a present, and that history which has become an empty narration
is a past: it is an irrevocable past, if not absolutely so, καθ' αὑτό,
then certainly for the present moment.

The empty words remain, and the empty words are sounds, or the graphic
signs which represent them, and they hold together and maintain
themselves, not by an act of thought that thinks them (in which case
they would soon be filled), but by an act of will, which thinks it
useful for certain ends of its own to preserve those words, however
empty or half empty they may be. Mere narrative, then, is nothing but a
complex of empty words or formulas asserted by an act of the will.

Now with this definition we have succeeded in giving neither more
nor less than the true distinction, hitherto sought in vain, between
_history_ and _chronicle_. It has been sought in vain, because it has
generally been sought in a difference in the _quality_ of the facts
which each difference took as its object. Thus, for instance, the
record of _individual_ facts has been attributed to chronicle, to
history that of _general_ facts; to chronicle the record of _private_,
to history that of _public_ facts: as though the general were not
always individual and the individual general, and the public were not
always also private and the private public! Or else the record of
_important_ facts (memorable things) has been attributed to history, to
chronicle that of the _unimportant_: as though the importance of facts
were not relative to the situation in which we find ourselves, and as
though for a man annoyed by a mosquito the evolutions of the minute
insect were not of greater importance than the expedition of Xerxes!
Certainly, we are sensible of a just sentiment in these fallacious
distinctions--namely, that of placing the difference between history
and chronicle in the conception of what _interests_ and of what does
not _interest_ (the general interests and not the particular, the
great interests and not the little, etc.). A just sentiment is also
to be noted in other considerations that are wont to be adduced, such
as the close bond between events that there is in history and the
_disconnectedness_ that appears on the other hand in chronicle, the
_logical_ order of the first, the purely _chronological_ order of the
second, the penetration of the first into the _core_ of events and
the limitation of the second to the superficial or _external_, and
the like. But the differential character is here rather metaphorized
than thought, and when metaphors are not employed as simple forms
expressive of thought we lose a moment after what has just been gained.
The truth is that chronicle and history are not distinguishable as
two forms of history, mutually complementary, or as one subordinate
to the other, but as two different spiritual _attitudes_. History is
living chronicle, chronicle is dead history; history is contemporary
history, chronicle is past history; history is principally an act of
thought, chronicle an act of will. Every history becomes chronicle
when it is no longer thought, but only recorded in abstract words,
which were once upon a time concrete and expressive. The history of
philosophy even is chronicle, when written or read by those who do not
understand philosophy: history would even be what we are now disposed
to read as chronicle, as when, for instance, the monk of Monte Cassino
notes: 1001. _Beatus Dominicus migravit ad Christum_. 1002. _Hoc anno
venerunt Saraceni super Capuam_. 1004. _Terremotus ingens hunc montem
exagitavit_, etc.; for those facts were present to him when he wept
over the death of the departed Dominic, or was terrified by the natural
human scourges that convulsed his native land, seeing the hand of God
in that succession of events. This does not prevent that history from
assuming the form of chronicle when that same monk of Monte Cassino
wrote down cold formulas, without representing to himself or thinking
their content, with the sole intention of not allowing those memories
to be lost and of handing them down to those who should inhabit Monte
Cassino after him.

But the discovery of the real distinction between chronicle and
history, which is a formal distinction (that is to say, a truly real
distinction), not only frees us from the sterile and fatiguing search
after material distinctions (that is to say, imaginary distinctions),
but it also enables us to reject a very common presupposition--namely,
that of the _priority_ of chronicle in respect to history. _Primo
annales_ [chronicles] _fuere, post historiæ factæ sunt_, the saying of
the old grammarian, Mario Vittorino, has been repeated, generalized,
and universalized. But precisely the opposite of this is the outcome of
the inquiry into the character and therefore into the genesis of the
two operations or attitudes: _first comes history, then chronicle_.
First comes the living being, then the corpse; and to make history the
child of chronicle is the same thing as to make the living be born from
the corpse, which is the residue of life, as chronicle is the residue
of history.




III


History, separated from the living document and turned into chronicle,
is no longer a spiritual act, but a thing, a complex of sounds and
of other signs. But the document also, when separated from life, is
nothing but a thing like another, a complex of sounds or of other
signs--for example, the sounds and the letters in which a law was once
communicated; the lines cut into a block of marble, which manifested a
religious sentiment by means of the figure of a god; a heap of bones,
which were at one time the expression of a man or of an animal.

Do such things as empty narratives and dead documents exist? In a
certain sense, no, because external things do not exist outside the
spirit; and we already know that chronicle, as empty narrative, exists
in so far as the spirit produces it and holds it firmly with an act of
will (and it may be opportune to observe once more that such an act
carries always with it a new act of consciousness and of thought):
with an act of will, which abstracts the sound from the thought,
in which dwelt the certainty and concreteness of the sound. In the
same way, these dead documents exist to the extent that they are the
manifestations of a new life, as the lifeless corpse is really itself
also a process of vital creation, although it appears to be one of
decomposition and something dead in respect of a particular form of
life. But in the same way as those empty sounds, which once contained
the thought of a history, are eventually called _narratives_, in memory
of the thought they contained, thus do those manifestations of a new
life continue to be looked upon as remnants of the life that preceded
them and is indeed extinguished.

Now observe how, by means of this string of deductions, we have
put ourselves into the position of being able to account for the
partition of historical _sources_ into _narratives_ and _documents_,
as we find it among some of our modern methodologists, or, as it
is also formulated, into _traditions_ and _residues_ or _remains_
(_Überbleibsel_, _Überreste_). This partition is irrational from
the empirical point of view, and may be of use as indicating the
inopportunity of the introduction of a speculative thought into
empiricism. It is so irrational that one immediately runs against
the difficulty of not being able to distinguish what one wished to
distinguish. An empty 'narrative' considered as a thing is tantamount
to any other thing whatever which is called a 'document.' And, on
the other hand, if we maintain the distinction we incur the further
difficulty of having to base our historical construction upon two
different orders of data (one foot on the bank and the other in
the river)--that is to say, we shall have to recur to two parallel
instances, one of which is perpetually referring us back to the other.
And when we seek to determine the relation of the two kinds of sources
with a view to avoiding the inconvenient parallelism, what happens is
this: either the relation is stated to depend upon the superiority
of the one over the other, and the distinction vanishes, because the
superior form absorbs into itself and annuls the inferior form; or
a third term is established, in which the two forms are supposed to
become united with a distinction: but this is another way of declaring
them to be inexistent in that abstractness. For this reason it does not
seem to me to be without significance that the partition of accounts
and documents should not have been adopted by the most empirical of the
methodologists. They do not involve themselves in these subtleties,
but content themselves with grouping the historical sources into those
that are _written_ and those that are _represented_, or in other
similar ways. In Germany, however, Droysen availed himself of these
distinctions between narratives and documents, traditions, etc., in
his valuable _Elements of Historicism_ (he had strong leanings toward
philosophy), and they have been employed also by other methodologists,
who are hybrid empiricists, 'systematists,' or 'pedants,' as they
are looked upon in our Latin countries. This is due to the copious
philosophical traditions of Germany. The pedantry certainly exists,
and it is to be found just in that inopportune philosophy. But what
an excellent thing is that pedantry and the contradictions which it
entails, how it arouses the mind from its empirical slumbers and makes
it see that in place of supposed things there are in reality spiritual
acts, where the terms of an irreconcilable dualism were supposed
to be in conflict, relation and unity, on the contrary, prevail!
The partition of the sources into narratives and documents, and the
superiority attributed to documents over narratives, and the alleged
necessity of narrative as a subordinate but ineradicable element,
almost form a mythology or allegory, which represents in an imaginative
manner the relation between life and thought, between document and
criticism in historical thought.

And document and criticism, life and thought, are the true _sources_
of history--that is to say, the two elements of historical synthesis;
and as such, they do not stand face to face with history, or face to
face with the synthesis, in the same way as fountains are represented
as being face to face with those who go to them with a pail, but they
form part of history itself, they are within the synthesis, they
form a constituent part of it and are constituted by it. Hence the
idea of a history with its sources outside itself is another fancy
to be dispelled, together with that of history being the opposite of
chronicle. The two erroneous fancies converge to form one. Sources, in
the extrinsic sense of the empiricists, like things, are equally with
chronicle, which is a class of those things, not anterior but posterior
to history. History would indeed be in a fix if it expected to be
born of what comes after it, to be born of external things! Thing, not
thought, is born of thing: a history derived from things would be a
thing--that is to say, just the inexistent of which we were talking a
moment ago.

But there must be a reason why chronicle as well as documents seems
to precede history and to be its extrinsic source. The human spirit
preserves the mortal remains of history, empty narratives and
chronicles, and the same spirit collects the traces of past life,
remains and documents, striving as far as possible to preserve them
unchanged and to restore them as they deteriorate. What is the object
of these acts of will which go to the preservation of what is empty
and dead? Perhaps illusion or foolishness, which preserves a little
while the worn-out elements of mortality on the confines of Dis by
means of the erection of mausoleums and sepulchres? But sepulchres
are not foolishness and illusion; they are, on the contrary, an act
of morality, by which is affirmed the immortality of the work done by
individuals. Although dead, they live in our memory and will live in
the memory of times to come. And that collecting of dead documents and
writing down of empty histories is an act of life which serves life.
The moment will come when they will serve to reproduce past history,
enriched and made present to our spirit.

For dead history revives, and past history again becomes present, as
the development of life demands them. The Romans and the Greeks lay
in their sepulchres, until awakened at the Renaissance by the new
maturity of the European spirit. The primitive forms of civilization,
so gross and so barbaric, lay forgotten, or but little regarded, or
misunderstood, until that new phase of the European spirit, which was
known as Romanticism or Restoration, 'sympathized' with them--that is
to say, recognized them as its own proper present interest. Thus great
tracts of history which are now chronicle for us, many documents now
mute, will in their turn be traversed with new flashes of life and will
speak again.

These revivals have altogether interior motives, and no wealth of
documents or of narratives will bring them about; indeed, it is they
themselves that copiously collect and place before themselves the
documents and narratives, which without them would remain scattered
and inert. And it will be impossible ever to understand anything of
the effective process of historical thought unless we start from the
principle that the spirit itself is history, maker of history at every
moment of its existence, and also the result of all anterior history.
Thus the spirit bears with it all its history, which coincides with
itself. To forget one aspect of history and to remember another one
is nothing but the rhythm of the life of the spirit, which operates
by determining and individualizing itself, and by always rendering
indeterminate and disindividualizing previous determinations and
individualizations, in order to create others more copious. The spirit,
so to speak, lives again its own history without those external
things called narratives and documents; but those external things are
instruments that it makes for itself, acts preparatory to that internal
vital evocation in whose process they are resolved. The spirit asserts
and jealously preserves 'records of the past' for that purpose.

What we all of us do at every moment when we note dates and other
matters concerning our private affairs (chronicles) in our
pocket-books, or when we place in their little caskets ribbons and
dried flowers (I beg to be allowed to select these pleasant images,
when giving instances of the collection of 'documents'), is done on a
large scale by a certain class of workers called _philologists_, as
though at the invitation of the whole of society. They are specially
known as the _erudite_ when they collect evidence and narrations,
as _archæologists_ and _archivists_ when they collect documents and
monuments, as the places where such objects are kept (the "silent white
abodes of the dead") are called libraries, archives, and museums.
Can there be any ill-feeling against these men of erudition, these
archivists and archæologists, who fulfil a necessary and therefore
a useful and important function? The fact remains that there is a
tendency to mock at them and to regard them with compassion. It is
true enough that they sometimes afford a hold for derision with their
ingenuous belief that they have history under lock and key and are
able to unlock the 'sources' at which thirsty humanity may quench its
desire for knowledge; but we know that history is in all of us and that
its sources are in our own breasts. For it is in our own breasts alone
that is to be found that crucible in which the _certain_ is converted
into the _true_, and _philology_, joining with _philosophy_, produces
_history_.




II


PSEUDO-HISTORIES


History, chronicle, and philology, of which we have seen the origin,
are series of mental forms, which, although distinct from one another,
must all of them be looked upon as physiological--that is to say, true
and rational. But logical sequence now leads me from physiology to
pathology--to those forms that are not forms but deformations, not true
but erroneous, not rational but irrational.

The ingenuous belief cherished by the philologists that they have
history locked up in their libraries, museums, and archives (something
in the same manner as the genius of the _Arabian Nights_, who was
shut up in a small vase in the form of compressed smoke) does not
remain inactive, and gives rise to the idea of a history constructed
with things, traditions, and documents (empty traditions and dead
documents), and this affords an instance of what may be called
_philological_ history. I say the idea and not the reality, because
it is simply impossible to compose a history with external things,
whatever efforts may be made and whatever trouble be taken. Chronicles
that have been weeded, chopped up into fragments, recombined,
rearranged, always remain nevertheless chronicles--that is to say,
empty narratives; and documents that have been restored, reproduced,
described, brought into line, remain documents--that is to say, silent
things. Philological history consists of the pouring out of one or
more books into a new book. This operation bears an appropriate name
in current language and is known as 'compilation.' These compilations
are frequently convenient, because they save the trouble of having
recourse to several books at the same time; but they do not contain
any historical thought. Modern chronological philologists regard
medieval chroniclers and the old Italian historians (from Machiavelli
and Guicciardini down to Giannone) with a feeling of superiority.
These writers 'transcribed,' as they called it, their 'sources' in
the parts of their books that are devoted to narrative--that is
to say, chronicle. Yet they themselves do not and cannot behave
otherwise, because when history is being composed from 'sources' as
external things there is never anything else to do but to transcribe
the sources. Transcription is varied by sometimes summarizing and
sometimes altering the words, and this is sometimes a question of
good taste and sometimes a literary pretence; it is also a verifying
of quotations, which is sometimes a proof of loyalty and exactitude,
sometimes a make-believe and a making oneself believe that the feet
are planted firmly on the earth, on the soil of truth, believed to
be narrative and quotation from the document. How very many of such
philological historians there are in our time, especially since the
so-called 'philological method' has been exaggerated--that is to say,
a one-sided value has been attributed to it! These histories have
indeed a dignified and scientific appearance, but unfortunately _fehlt
leider! das geistige Band_, the spiritual tie is wanting. They really
consist at bottom of nothing but learned or very learned 'chronicles,'
sometimes of use for purposes of consultation, but lacking words that
nourish and keep warm the minds and souls of men.

Nevertheless, since we have demonstrated that philological history
really presents chronicles and documents and not histories, it might
be asked upon what possible ground do we accuse it of irrationality
and error, seeing that we have regarded the formation of chronicles,
the collection of documents, and all the care that is expended Upon
them as most rational? But error never lies in the fact, but only in
the 'claim' or 'idea' that accompanies the fact. And in this case
the idea or claim is that which has been defined above as properly
belonging to philological history--namely, that of composing histories
with documents and narratives. This claim can be said to exercise a
rational function also, to the extent that it lays down the claim,
though without satisfying it, that history should go beyond the mere
chronicle or document. But in so far as it makes the claim, without
itself fulfilling it, this mode of history must be characterized as
contradictory and absurd.

And since the claim is absurd, philological history remains without
truth as being that which, like chronicle, has not got truth within
it, but derives it from the authority to which it appeals. It will be
claimed for philology that it tests authorities and selects those most
worthy of faith. But without dwelling upon the fact that chronicle
also, and chronicle of the crudest, most ignorant and credulous sort,
proceeded in a like manner by testing and selecting those authorities
which seemed to it to be the most worthy of faith, it is always a
question of faith (that is to say, of the thought of others and of
thought belonging to the past) and not of criticism (that is to say,
of our own thought in the act), of verisimilitude and not of that
certainty which is truth. Hence philological history can certainly be
_correct_, but not _true_ (_richtig_ and not _wahr_). And as it is
without truth, so is it without true historical interest--that is to
say, it sheds no light upon an order of facts answering to a practical
and ethical want; it may embrace any matter indifferently, however
remote it be from the practical and ethical soul of the compiler.
Thus, as a pure philologist, I enjoy the free choice of indifference,
and the history of Italy for the last half-century has the same value
for me as that of the Chinese dynasty of the Tsin. I shall turn from
one to the other, moved, no doubt, by a certain interest, but by an
extra-historical interest, of the sort formed in the special circle of
philology.

This procedure, which is without truth and without passion, and is
proper to philological history, explains the marked contrast so
constantly renewed between the philological historians and historians
properly so called. These latter, intent as they are upon the solution
of vital problems, grow impatient to find themselves offered in reply
the frigid products of philology, or become angry at the persistent
assertion that such is history, and that it must be treated in such
a spirit and with such methods. Perhaps the finest explosion of such
a feeling of anger and annoyance is to be found in the _Letters on
the Study of History_ (1751) of Bolingbroke, in which erudition is
treated as neither more nor less than sumptuous ignorance, and learned
disquisitions upon ancient or primitive history are admitted at the
most as resembling those 'eccentric preludes' which precede concerts
and aid in setting the instruments in tune and that can only be
mistaken for harmony by some one without ear, just in the same way as
only he who is without historic sense can confuse those exhibitions of
erudition with true history. As an antithesis to them he suggests as
an ideal a kind of 'political maps,' for the use of the intellect and
not of the memory, indicating the _Storie fiorentine_ of Machiavelli
and the _Trattato dei benefici_ of Fra Paolo as writings that approach
that ideal. Finally he maintains that for true and living history we
should not go beyond the beginning of the sixteenth century, beyond
Charles V and Henry VIII, when the political and social history of
Europe first appeared--a system which still persisted at the beginning
of the eighteenth century. He then proceeds to paint a picture of those
two centuries of history, for the use, not of the curious and the
erudite, but of politicians, too one, I think, would wish to deny the
just sentiment for history which animates these demands, set forth in
so vivacious a manner. Bolingbroke, however, did not rise, nor was it
possible for him to rise, to the conception of the death and rebirth of
every history (which is the rigorously speculative concept of 'actual'
and 'contemporary' history), owing to the conditions of culture of
his time, nor did he suspect that primitive barbaric history, which
he threw into a corner as useless dead leaves, would reappear quite
fresh half a century later, as the result of the reaction against
intellectualism and Jacobinism, and that this reaction would have as
one of its principal promoters a publicist of his own country, Burke,
nor indeed that it had already reappeared in his own time in a corner
of Italy, in the mind and soul of Giambattista Vico. I shall not adduce
further instances of the conflict between effective and philological
historians, after this conspicuous one of Bolingbroke, because it is
exceedingly well known, and the strife is resumed under our very eyes
at every moment. I shall only add that it is certainly deplorable
(though altogether natural, because blows are not measured in a
struggle) that the polemic against the 'philologists' should have been
transferred so as to include also the philologues pure and simple. For
these latter, the poor learned ones, archivists and archæologists, are
harmless, beneficent little souls. If they should be destroyed, as is
sometimes prophesied in the heat of controversy, the fertility of the
spiritual field would be not only diminished, but ruined altogether,
and we should be obliged to promote to the utmost of our power the
reintroduction of those coefficients of our culture, very much in the
same way as is said to have been the case with French agriculture after
the improvident harrying of the harmless and beneficent wasps which
went on for several years.

Whatever of justified or justifiable is to be found in the statements
as to the _uncertainty_ and _uselessness_ of history is also due to
the revolt of the pure historic sense against philological history.
This is to be assumed from observing that even the most radical of
those opponents (Fontenelle, Volney, Delfico, etc.) end by admitting
or demanding some form of history as not useless or uncertain, or not
altogether useless and uncertain, and from the fact that all their
shafts are directed against philological history and that founded upon
authority, of which the only appropriate definition is that of Rousseau
(in the _Émile_), as _l'art de choisir entre plusieurs mensonges, celui
qui ressemble mieux à la vérité._

In all other respects--that is to say, as regards the part due to
sensational and naturalistic assumptions--historical scepticism
contradicts itself here, like every form of scepticism, for the natural
sciences themselves, thus raised to the rank of model, are founded upon
perceptions, observations, and experiments--that is to say, upon facts
historically ascertained--and the 'sensations,' upon which the whole
truth of knowledge is based, are not themselves knowledge, save to the
extent that they assume the form of affirmations--that is to say, in so
far as they are history.

But the truth is that philological history, like every other sort of
error, does not fall before the enemy's attack, but rather solely
from internal causes, and it is its own professors that destroy it,
when they conceive of it as without connexion with life, as merely
a learned exercise (note the many histories that are treatments of
scholastic themes, undertaken with a view to training in the art of
research, interpretation, and exposition, and the many others that
are continuations of this direction outside the school and are due to
tendency there imparted), and when they themselves evince uncertainty,
surrounding every statement that they make with _doubts_. The
distinction between _criticism_ and _hypercriticism_ has been drawn
with a view to arresting this spontaneous dissolution of historical
philology; thus we find the former praised and allowed, while the
latter is blamed and forbidden. But the distinction is one of the
customary sort, by means of which lack of intelligence disguised as
love of moderation contrives to chip off the edges from the antitheses
that it fails to solve. Hypercriticism is the prosecution of criticism;
it is criticism itself, and to divide criticism into a more and a less,
and to admit the less and deny the more, is extravagant, to say the
least of it. No 'authorities' are certain while others are uncertain,
but all are uncertain, varying in uncertainty in an extrinsic and
conjectural manner. Who can guarantee himself against the false
statement made by the usually diligent and trustworthy witness in a
moment of distraction or of passion? A sixteenth-century inscription,
still to be read in one of the old byways of Naples, wisely prays
God (and historical philologists should pray to Him fervently every
morning) to deliver us now and for ever from _the lies of honest
men_. Thus historians who push criticism to the point of so-called
hypercriticism perform a most instructive philosophical duty when they
render the whole of such work vain, and therefore fit to be called
by the title of Sanchez's work _Quod nihil scitur_. I recollect the
remark made to me when I was occupied with research work in my young
days by a friend of but slight literary knowledge, to whom I had lent
a very critical, indeed hypercritical, history of ancient Rome. When
he had finished reading it he returned the book to me, remarking that
he had acquired the proud conviction of being "the most learned of
philologists," because the latter arrive at the conclusion that they
know nothing as the result of exhausting toil, while he knew nothing
without any effort at all, simply as a generous gift of nature.[1]



II


The consequence of this spontaneous dissolution of philological history
should be the negation of history claimed to have been written with
the aid of narratives and documents conceived as external things, and
the consignment of these to their proper lower place as mere aids to
historical knowledge, as it determines and redetermines itself in the
development of the spirit. But if such consequences are distasteful
and the project is persevered in of thus writing history in spite of
repeated failures, the further problem then presents itself as to
how the cold indifference of philological history and its intrinsic
uncertainty can be healed without changing those presumptions. The
problem, itself fallacious, can receive but a fallacious solution,
expressed by the substitution of the interest of _sentiment_ for
the lack of interest of thought and of _æsthetic_ coherence of
representation for the logical coherence here unobtainable. The new
erroneous form of history thus obtained is _poetical history._

Numerous examples of this kind of history are afforded by the
affectionate biographies of persons much beloved and venerated and by
the satirical biographies of the detested; patriotic histories which
vaunt the glory and lament the misadventures of the people to which the
author belongs and with which he sympathizes, and those that shed a
sinister light upon the enemy people, adversary of his own; universal
history, illuminated with the ideals of liberalism or humanitarianism,
that composed by a socialist, depicting the acts, as Marx said, of the
"cavalier of the sorry countenance," in other words of the capitalist,
that of the anti-Semite, who shows the Jew to be everywhere the source
of human misfortune and of human turpitude and the persecution of the
Jew to be the acme of human splendour and happiness. Nor is poetical
history exhausted with this fundamental and general description of
love and hate (love that is hate and hate that is love), for it passes
through all the most intricate forms, the fine gradations of sentiment.
Thus we have poetical histories which are amorous, melancholy,
nostalgic, pessimistic, resigned, confident, cheerful, and as many
other sorts as one can imagine. Herodotus celebrates the romance of the
jealousies of the gods, Livy the epos of Roman virtue, Tacitus composes
horrible tragedies, Elizabethan dramas in sculptural Latin prose. If
we turn to the most modern among the moderns, we find Droysen giving
expression to his lyrical aspiration toward the strong centralized
state in his history of Macedonia, that Prussia of Hellas; Grote to his
aspirations toward democratic institutions, as symbolized in Athens;
Mommsen to those directed toward empire, as symbolized in Cæsar;
Balbo pouring forth all his ardours for Latin independence, employing
for that purpose all the records of Latin battles and beginning with
nothing less than those between the Itali and Etrusci against the
Pelasgi; Thierry celebrating the middle class in the history of the
Third Estate represented by Jacques Bonhomme; the Goncourts writing
voluptuous fiction round the figures of Mme de Pompadour, of Mme Du
Barry, of Marie Antoinette, more careful of the material and cut of
garments than of thoughts; and, finally, De Barante, in his history of
the Dukes of Burgundy, having his eye upon knights and ladies, arms and
love.

It may seem that the indifference of philological history is thus
truly conquered and historical material dominated by a principle and
criterion of _values_. This is the demand persistently addressed to
history from all sides in our day by methodologists and philosophers.
But I have avoided the word 'value' hitherto, owing to its equivocal
meaning, apt to deceive many. For since history is history of the
spirit, and since spirit is value, and indeed the only value that is
possible to conceive, that history is clearly always history of values;
and since the spirit becomes transparent to itself as thought in the
consciousness of the historian, the value that rules the writing of
history is the value of thought. But precisely for this reason its
principle of determination cannot be the value known as the value of
'sentiment,' which is life and not thought, and when this life finds
expression and representation, before it has been dominated by thought,
we have poetry, not history. In order to turn poetical biography into
truly historical biography we must repress our loves, our tears, our
scorn, and seek what function the individual has fulfilled in social
activity or civilization; and we must do the same for national history
as for that of humanity, and for every group of facts, small or great,
as for every order of events. We must supersede--that is to say,
transform--values of _sentiment_ with values of _thought_. If we do not
find ourselves able to rise to this 'subjectivity' of thought, we shall
produce poetry and not history: the historical problem will remain
intact, or, rather, it will not yet have come into being, but will do
so when the requisite conditions are present. The interest that stirs
us in the former case is not that of life which becomes thought, but of
life which becomes intuition and imagination.

And since we have entered the domain of poetry, while the historical
problem remains beyond, erudition Or philology, from which we seem
to have started, remains something on this side--that is to say, is
altogether surpassed. In philological history, notwithstanding the
claims made by it, chronicles and documents persist in their crude
natural and undigested state. But these are profoundly changed in
poetical history; or, to speak with greater accuracy, they are simply
dissolved. Let us ignore the case (common enough) of the historian
who, with a view to obtaining artistic effects, intentionally mingles
his inventions with the data provided by the chronicles and documents,
endeavouring to make them pass for history--that is to say, he renders
himself guilty of a lie and is the cause of confusion. But the
alteration that is continuous and inherent to historiography consists
of the choice and connexion of the details themselves, selected from
the 'sources,' rather owing to motives of sentiment than of thought.
This, closely considered, is really an invention or imagining of the
facts; the new connexion becomes concrete in a newly imagined fact. And
since the data that are taken from the 'sources' do not always lend
themselves with docility to the required connexion, it is considered
permissible to _solliciter doucement les textes_ (as, if I am not
mistaken, Renan, one of the historian-poets, remarked) and to add
imaginary particulars, though in a conjectural form, to the actual
data. Vossius blamed those Grecian historians, and historians of other
nations, who, when they invent fables, _ad effugiendam vanitatis notam
satis fore putant si addant solemne suum 'aiunt,' 'fertur,' vel aliquid
quod tantundem valeat_. But even in our own day it would be diverting
and instructive to catalogue the forms of insinuation employed by
historians who pass for being most weighty, with a view to introducing
their own personal imaginings: 'perhaps,' 'it would seem,' 'one would
say,' 'it is pleasant to think,' 'we may infer,' 'it is probable,' 'it
is evident,' and the like; and to note how they sometimes come to omit
these warnings and recount things that they have themselves imagined
as though they had seen them, in order to complete their picture,
regarding which they would be much embarrassed if some one, indiscreet
as an _enfant terrible_, should chance to ask them: "How do you know
it?" "Who told you this?" Recourse has been had to the methodological
theory of "imagination necessary for the historian who does not wish
to become a mere chronicler," to an imagination, that is to say, which
shall be reconstructive and integrating; or, as is also said, to
"the necessity of integrating the historical datum with our personal
psychology or psychological knowledge." This theory, similar to that
of value in history, also contains an equivocation. For doubtless
imagination is indispensable to the historian: empty criticism, empty
narrative, the concept without intuition or imagination, are altogether
sterile; and this has been said and said again in these pages, when
we have demanded the vivid experience of the events whose history we
have undertaken to relate, which also means their re-elaboration as
intuition and imagination. Without this imaginative reconstruction or
integration it is not possible to write history, or to read it, or to
understand it. But this sort of imagination, which is really quite
indispensable to the historian, is the imagination that is inseparable
from the historical synthesis, the imagination in and for thought, the
concreteness of thought, which is never an abstract concept, but always
a relation and a judgment, not indetermination but determination. It
is nevertheless to be radically distinguished from the free poetic
imagination, dear to those historians who see and hear the face and
the voice of Jesus on the Lake of Tiberias, or follow Heraclitus on
his daily walks among the hills of Ephesus, or repeat again the secret
colloquies between Francis of Assisi and the sweet Umbrian countryside.

Here too we shall be asked of what error, then, we can accuse poetical
history, if it be poetry (a necessary form of the spirit and one of the
dearest to the heart of man) and not history. But here also we must
reply--in manner analogous to our reply in the case of philological
history--that the error does not lie in what is done, but in what is
claimed to be done: not in creating poetry, but in calling histories
that are poetry poetical histories, which is a contradiction in terms.
So far am I from entertaining the thought of objecting to poetry
woven out of historical data that I wish to affirm that a great part
of pure poetry, especially in modern times, is to be found in books
that are called histories. The epic, for instance, did not, as is
believed, die in the nineteenth century, but it is not to be found in
the 'epic poems' of Botta, of Bagnoli, of Bellini, or of Bandettini,
where it is sought by short-sighted classifiers of literature, but in
narratives of the history of the Risorgimento, where are poured forth
epic, drama, satire, idyll, elegy, and as many other 'kinds of poetry'
as may be desired. The historiography of the Risorgimento is in great
part a poetical historiography, rich in legends which still await
the historian, or have met with him only occasionally and by chance,
exactly like ancient or medieval epic, which, if it were really poetry,
was yet believed by its hearers, and often perhaps by its composers
themselves, to be history. And I claim for others and for myself
the right to imagine history as dictated by my personal feeling; to
imagine, for instance, an Italy as fair as a beloved woman, as dear as
the tenderest of mothers, as austere as a venerated ancestress, to seek
out her doings through the centuries and even to prophesy her future,
and to create for myself in history idols of hatred and of love, to
embellish yet more the charming, if I will, and to make the unpleasant
yet more unpleasant. I claim to seek out every memory and every
particular, the expressions of countenance, the gestures, the garments,
the dwellings, every kind of insignificant particular (insignificant
for others or in other respects, but not for me at that moment), almost
physically to approach my friends and my mistresses, of both of which
I possess a fine circle or harem in history. But it remains evident
that when I or others have the intention of writing history, true
history and not poetical history, we shall clear away myths and idols,
friends and mistresses, devoting our attention solely to the problem of
history, which is spirit or value (or if less philosophical and more
colloquial terms be preferred, culture, civilization, progress), and we
shall look upon them with the two eyes and the single sight of thought.
And when some one, in that sphere or at that altitude, begins to talk
to us of the sentiments that but a short while ago were tumultuous in
our breasts, we shall listen to him as to one who talks of things that
are henceforth distant and dead, in which we no longer participate,
because the only sentiment that now fills our soul is the sentiment of
truth, the search for historical truth.


[1] See Appendix I.



III


With poetical history--that is to say, with the falling back of history
into a form ideally anterior, that of poetry--the cycle of erroneous
forms of history (or of erroneous theoretical forms) is complete.
But my discourse would not perhaps be complete were I to remain
silent as to a so-called form of history which had great importance
in antiquity when it developed its own theory. It continues to have
some importance in our own day, although now inclined to conceal its
face, to change its garments, and to disguise itself. This is the
history known in antiquity as _oratory_ or _rhetoric_. Its object was
to teach philosophy by example, to incite to virtuous conduct, to
impart instruction as to the best political and military institutions,
or simply to delight, according to the various intentions of the
rhetoricians. And even in our own day this type of history is demanded
and supplied not only in the elementary schools (where it seems to
be understood that the bitter of wisdom should be imbibed by youth
mingled with the sweet of fable), but among grown men. It is closely
linked up with politics, where it is a question of politics, or with
religion, philosophy, morality, and the like, where they are concerned,
or with diversions, as in the case of anecdotes, of strange events,
of scandalous and terrifying histories. But can this, I ask, be
considered, I do not say history, but an erroneous (theoretical) form
of history? The structure of rhetorical history presupposes a _history
that already exists_, or at least a poetical history, narrated with
a _practical end_. The end would be to induce an emotion leading to
virtue, to remorse, to shame, or to enthusiasm; or perhaps to provide
repose for the soul, such as is supplied by games; or to introduce into
the mind a historical, philosophical, or scientific truth (_movere,
delectare, docere,_ or in whatever way it may be decided to classify
these ends); but it will always be an end--that is to say, a practical
act, which avails itself of the telling of the history as a means
or as one of its means. Hence rhetorical history (which would be
more correctly termed _practicistical_ history) is composed of two
elements, history and the practical end, converging into one, which
is the practical act. For this reason one cannot attack it, but only
its theory, which is the already mentioned theory, so celebrated in
antiquity, of history as opus oratorium, as φιλοσοφία ἐκ παραδειγμάτων,
as ἀποδεικτική, as νίκης γύμνασμα (if warlike), or γνωμης παίδενμα (if
political), or as evocative of ἡδονή, and the like. This doctrine is
altogether analogous to the hedonistic and pedagogic doctrine relating
to poetry which at that time dominated. It was believed possible to
assign an end to poetry, whereas an _extrinsic end_ was assigned to it,
and poetry was thus passed over without being touched. Practicistical
history (which, however, is not history) is exempt from censure as
a practical act: each one of us is not content with inquiring into
history, but also acts, and in acting can quite well avail himself of
the re-evocation of this or that image, with a view to stimulating his
own work, or (which comes to the same thing) the work of others. He
can, indeed, read and re-read all the books that have from time to time
been of assistance to him, as Cato the younger had recourse to reading
the _Phædo_ in order to prepare himself for suicide, while others have
prepared themselves for it by reading _Werther, Ortis,_ or the poems of
Leopardi. From the time of the Renaissance to the eighteenth century,
many others prepared themselves for conspiracies and tyrannicides by
reading Plutarch, and so much was this the case that one of them, the
youthful Boscoli, when condemned to death for a conspiracy against the
Medici, remarked in his last hour to Della Robbia (who recounts the
incident), "Get Brutus out of my head!"--Brutus, not, that is to say,
the history of Brutus that he had read and thought about, but that by
which he had been fascinated and urged on to commit the crime. For the
rest, true and proper history is not that Brutus which procreated the
modern Bruti with their daggers, but Brutus as thought and situated in
the world of thought.

One might be induced to assign a special place to the history now known
as biased, because, on the one hand, it seems that it is not a simple
history of sentiment and poetry, since it has an end to attain, and
on the other because such end is not imposed upon it from without,
but coincides with the conception of history itself. Hence it would
seem fitting to look upon it as a form of history standing half-way
between poetry and practicism, a mixture of the two. But mixed forms
and hybrid products exist only in the fictitious classifications
of empiricists, never in the reality of the spirit, and biased
history, when closely examined, is really either poetical history or
practicistical history. An exception must always be made of the books
in which the two moments are sometimes to be found side by side, as
indeed one usually finds true history and chronicle and the document
and philological and poetical history side by side. What gives the
illusion of a mingling or of a special form of history is the fact that
many take their point of departure from poetical inspiration (love of
country, faith in their country, enthusiasm for a great man, and so on)
and end with practical calculations: they begin with poetry and end
with the allegations of the special pleader, and sometimes, although
more rarely, they follow an opposite course. This duplication is to be
observed in the numerous histories of parties that have been composed
since the world was a world, and it is not difficult to discover in
what parts of them we have manifestations of poetry and in what parts
of calculation. Good taste and criticism are continually effecting this
separation for history, as for art and poetry in general.

It is true that good taste loves and accepts poetry and discriminates
between the practical intentions of the poet and those of the
historian-poet; but those intentions are received and admitted by the
moral conscience, provided always that they are good intentions and
consequently good actions; and although people are disposed to speak
ill of advocates in general, it is certain that the honest advocate
and the prudent orator cannot be dispensed with in social life. Nor
has so-called practicistical history ever been dispensed with, either
according to the Græco-Roman practice, which was that of proposing
portraits of statesmen, of captains, and of heroic women as models for
the soul, or according to that of the Middle Ages, which was to repeat
the lives of saints and hermits of the desert, or of knights strong
of arm and of unshakable faith, or in our own modern world, which
recommends as edifying and stimulating reading the lives and 'legends'
of inventors, of business men, of explorers, and of millionaires.
Educative histories, composed with the view of promoting definite
practical or moral dispositions, really exist, and every Italian knows
how great were the effects of Colletta's and Balbo's histories and the
like during the period of the Risorgimento, and everyone knows books
that have 'inspired' him or inculcated in him the love of his own
country, of his town and steeple.

This moral efficacy, which belongs to morality and not to history, has
had so strong a hold upon the mind that the prejudice still survives
of assigning a moral function to history (as also to poetry) in the
field of teaching. This prejudice is still to be found inspiring even
Labriola's pedagogic essay on _The Teaching of History_. But if we
mean by the word 'history' both history that is thought as well as
that which, on the contrary, is poetry, philology, or moral will, it
is clear that 'history' will enter the educational process not under
one form alone, but under all these forms. But as history proper it
will only enter it under one of them, which is not that of moral
education, exclusively or abstractly considered, but of the education
or development of thought.



IV


Much is said, now even more than formerly, of the necessity of a
'reform of history,' but to me there does not seem to be anything
to reform. Nothing to reform in the sense attributed to such a
demand--namely, that of moulding a _new form of history_ or of creating
for the first time _true history_. History is, has been, and always
will be the same, what we have called living history, history that is
(ideally) contemporary; and chronicle, philological history, poetical
history, and (let us call it history nevertheless) practicistical
history are, have been, and always will be the same. Those who
undertake the task of creating a new history always succeed in setting
up philological history against poetical history, or poetical history
against philological history, or contemporary history against both
of them, and so on. Unless, indeed, as is the case with Buckle and
the many tiresome sociologists and positivists of the last ten years,
they lament with great pomposity and no less lack of intelligence as
to what history is that it lacks the capacity of observation and of
experiment (that is to say, the naturalistic abstraction of observation
and experiment), boasting that they 'reduce history to natural
science'--that is to say, by the employment of a circle, as vicious as
it is grotesque, to a mental form which is its pale derivative.

In another sense, everything is certainly to be reformed in
history, and history is at every moment labouring to render herself
perfect--that is to say, is enriching herself and probing more deeply
into herself. There is no history that completely satisfies us,
because any construction of ours generates new facts and new problems
and solicits new solutions. Thus the history of Rome, of Greece, and
of Christianity, of the Reformation, of the French Revolution, of
philosophy, of literature, and of any other subject is always being
told afresh and always differently. But history reforms herself,
remaining herself always, and the strength of her development lies
precisely in thus enduring.

The demand for radical or abstract reform also cannot be given that
other meaning of a reform of the 'idea of history,' of the discovery
that is to be made or is finally made of the _true concept_ of
history. At all periods the distinction has to some extent been
made between histories that are histories and those others that
are works of imagination or chronicles. This could be demonstrated
from the observations met with at all times among historians and
methodologists, and from the confessions that even the most confused of
them involuntarily let fall. It is also to be inferred with certainty
from the nature itself of the human spirit, although the words in
which those distinctions are expressed have not been written or are
not preserved. And such a concept and distinction are renewed at
every moment by history itself, which becomes ever more copious, more
profound. This is to be looked upon as certain, and is for that matter
made evident by the history of historiography, which has certainly
accomplished some progress since the days of Diogenes of Halicarnassus
and of Cicero to those of Hegel and of Humboldt. Other problems have
been formed in our own day, some of which I attempt to solve in this
book. I am well aware that it affords solutions only to some among the
many, and especially that it does not solve (simply because it cannot)
those that are not yet formed, but which will inevitably be formed in
the future.

In any case it will be thought that the clearness acquired by the
historical consciousness as to the nature of its own work will at
least avail to destroy the erroneous forms of history, that since we
have shown that philological history or chronicle is not history, and
that poetical history is poetry and not history, the 'facts' that
correspond to those beliefs must disappear, or become ever more limited
in extension, to the point of disappearing altogether in a near or
distant future, as catapults have disappeared before guns and as we see
carriages disappearing before, automobiles.

And this would be truly possible were these erroneous forms to become
concrete in 'facts,' were they not, as I have said above, mere
'claims.' If error and evil were a fact, humanity would have long ago
abolished it--that is to say, superseded it, in the same way as it has
superseded slavery and serfdom and the method of simple barter and so
many other things that were facts, that is to say, its own transitory
forms. But error (and evil, which is one with it) is not a fact; it
does not possess empirical existence; it is nothing but the negative or
dialectical moment of the spirit, necessary for the concreteness of the
positive moment, for the reality of the spirit. For this reason it is
eternal and indestructible, and to destroy it by abstraction (since it
cannot be done by thought) is equivalent to imagining the death of the
spirit, as confirmed in the saying that abstraction is death.

And without occupying further space with the ex-position of a doctrine
that would entail too wide a digression,[1] I shall observe that a
glance at the history of history proves the salutary nature of error,
which is not a Caliban, but rather an Ariel, who breathes everywhere,
calling forth and exciting, but can never be grasped as a solid thing.
And with a view to seeking examples only in those general forms that
have been hitherto examined, polemical and tendencious historiography
is certainly to be termed error. This prevailed during the period of
the enlightenment, and reduced history to a pleading against priests
and tyrants. But who would have wished simply to return from this to
the learned and apathetic history of the Benedictines and of the other
authors of folios? The polemic and its direction expressed the need
for living history, though not in an altogether satisfactory form,
and this need was followed by the creation of a new historiography
during the period of romanticism. The type of merely philological
history, promulgated in Germany after 1820, and afterward disseminated
throughout Europe, was also certainly error; but it was likewise an
instrument of liberation from the more or less fantastic and arbitrary
histories improvised by the philosophers. But who would wish to turn
back from them to the 'philosophies of history'? The type of history,
sometimes tendencious, but more often poetical, which followed in the
wake of the national Italian movement, was also error--that is to say,
it led to the loss of historical calm. But that poetical consciousness
which surpassed itself when laying claim to historical truth was
bound sooner or later to generate (as had been the case on a larger
scale in the eighteenth century) a history linked with the interests
of life without becoming servile and allowing itself to be led away
by the phantoms of love and hate suggested by them. Further examples
could be adduced, but the example of examples is that which happens
within each of us when we are dealing with historical material. We
see our sympathies and antipathies arise in turn as we proceed (our
poetical history), our intentions as practical men (our rhetorical
history), our chroniclistical memories (our philological history); we
mentally supersede these forms in turn, and in doing so find ourselves
in possession of a new and more profound historical truth. Thus does
history affirm itself, distinguishing itself from non-histories and
conquering the dialectical moments which arise from these. It was
for this reason that I said that there is never anything of anything
to reform in the _abstract,_ but _everything of everything_ in the
_concrete_.


[1] See _Logic as Science of Pure Concept._--D. A.




III


HISTORY AS HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSAL CRITICISM OF 'UNIVERSAL HISTORY


I


Returning from this dialectical round to the concept of history as
'contemporary history,' a new doubt assails and torments us. For if
the proof given has freed that concept from one of the most insistent
forms of historical scepticism (the scepticism that arises from the
lack of reliability of 'testimony'), it does not seem that it has been
freed or ever can be freed from that other form of scepticism, more
properly termed 'agnosticism,' which does not absolutely deny the truth
of history, but denies to it _complete_ truth. But in ultimate analysis
this is to deny to it real knowledge, because unsound knowledge, half
knowledge, also reduces the vigour of the part that it asserts to be
known. It is, however, commonly asserted that only a part of history, a
very small part, is known to us: a faint glimmer which renders yet more
sensible the vast gloom that surrounds our knowledge on all sides.

In truth, what do we know of the origins of Rome or of the Greek
states, and of the people who preceded the Greek and Roman
civilizations in those countries, notwithstanding all the researches
of the learned? And if a fragment of the life of these people does
remain to us, how uncertain is its interpretation! If some tradition
has been handed down to us, how poor, confused, and contradictory it
is! And we know still less of the people who preceded those people, of
the immigrations from Asia and Africa into Europe or inversely, and of
relations with other countries beyond the ocean, even with the Atlantis
of the myths. And the monogenesis or polygenesis of the human race is a
desperate head-splitter, open to all conjectures. The appearance upon
the earth of the _genus homo_ is open to vain conjectures, as is his
affinity or relationship to the animals. The history of the earth, of
the solar system, of the whole cosmos, is lost in the obscurity of its
origin. But obscurity does not dwell alone among the 'origins'; the
whole of history, even that of modern Europe which is nearest to us,
is obscure. Who can really say what motives determined a Danton or a
Robespierre, a Napoleon or an Alexander of Russia? And how numerous are
the obscurities and the lacunæ that relate to the acts themselves--that
is to say, to their externalization! Mountains of books have been
written upon the days of September, upon the eighteenth of Brumaire,
upon the burning of Moscow; but who can tell how these things really
happened? Even those who were direct witnesses are not able to say, for
they have handed down to us diverse and conflicting narratives. But
let us leave great history. Will it not at least be possible for us to
know a little history completely, we will not say that of our country,
of our town, or of our family, but the least little history of any one
of ourselves: what he really wanted when (many years ago or yesterday)
he abandoned himself to this or that motive of passion, and uttered
this or that word; how he reached this or that particular conclusion
or decided upon some particular course of action; whether the motives
that urged him in a particular direction were lofty or base, moral or
egoistic, inspired by duty or by vanity, pure or impure?

It is enough to make one lose one's head, as those scrupulous people
are aware, who the more they attempt to perfect their examination
of conscience the more they are confused. No other counsel can be
offered to them than that of examining themselves certainly, but not
overmuch, of looking rather ahead than behind, or only looking behind
to the extent that it is necessary to look. We certainly know our own
history and that of the world that surrounds us, but how little and how
meagrely in comparison with our infinite desire for knowledge!

The best way of ending this vexation of spirit is that which I have
followed, that of pushing it to its extreme limit, and then of
imagining for a moment that all the interrogations mentioned, together
with the infinite others that could be mentioned, have been satisfied;
satisfied as interrogations that continued to the infinite can be
satisfied--that is to say, by affording an immediate answer to them,
one after the other, and by causing the spirit to enter the path of a
vertiginous process of satisfactions, always obtained to the infinite.
Now, were all those interrogations satisfactorily answered, were we
in possession of all the answers to them, what should we do? The road
of progress to the infinite is as wide as that to hell, and if it
does not lead to hell it certainly leads to the madhouse. And that
infinite, which grows bigger the moment we first touch it, does not
avail us; indeed it fills us with fear. Only the poor finite assists
us, the determined, the concrete, which is grasped by thought and which
lends itself as base for our existence and as point of departure for
our action. Thus even were all the particular infinities of infinite
history offered for the gratification of our desire, there would be
nothing else left for us to do but to clear our minds of them, to
_forget_ them, and to concentrate upon that particular point alone
which corresponds to a problem and constitutes living, active history,
_contemporary history_.

And this is what the spirit in its development accomplishes, because
there is no fact that is not known at the moment of its being done, by
means of the consciousness that germinates perpetually upon action;
and there is no fact that is not forgotten sooner or later, but may
be recalled, as we remarked when speaking of dead history revived at
the touch of life, of the past that by means of the contemporaneous
becomes again contemporaneous. Tolstoi got this thought fixed in his
mind: not only is no one, not even a Napoleon, able to predetermine
with exactitude the happenings of a battle, but no one can know how
it really did happen, because on the very evening of its ending an
artificial, legendary history appears, which only a credulous spirit
could mistake for real history; yet it is upon this that professional
historians work, integrating or tempering imagination with imagination.
But the battle is known as it gradually develops, and then as the
turmoil that it causes is dissipated, so too is dissipated the turmoil
of that consciousness, and the only thing of importance is the
actuality of the new situation and the 'new disposition of soul that
has been produced, expressed in poetical legends or availing itself
of artificial fictions. And each one of us at every moment knows and
forgets the majority of his thoughts and acts (what a misfortune
it would be if he did not do so, for his life would be a tiresome
computation of his smallest movements!); but he does not forget, and
preserves for a greater or less time, those thoughts and sentiments
which represent memorable crises and problems relating to his future.
Sometimes we assist with astonishment at the awakening in us of
sentiments and thoughts that we had believed to be irrevocable. Thus
it must be said that we know at every moment all the history that we
need to know; and since what remains over does not matter to us, we do
not possess the means of knowing it, or we shall possess it when the
need arises. That 'remaining' history is the eternal phantom of the
'thing in itself,' which is neither 'thing' nor 'in itself,' but only
the imaginative projection of the infinity of our action and of our
knowledge.

The imaginative projection of the thing in itself, with the agnosticism
that is its result, is caused in philosophy by the natural sciences,
which posit a reality made extrinsic and material and therefore
unintelligible. Chroniclism also occasions historical agnosticism
in an analogous manner at the naturalistic moment of history, for
it posits a dead and unintelligible history. Allowing itself to be
seduced by this allurement it strays from the path of concrete truth,
while the soul feels itself suddenly filled with infinite questions,
most vain and desperate. In like manner, he who strays from or has
not yet entered the fruitful path of a diligent life, feels his soul
full to overflowing of infinite desires, of actions that cannot be
realized, of pleasures out of reach, and consequently suffers the pains
of a Tantalus. But the wisdom of life warns us not to lose ourselves
in _absurd desires_, as the wisdom of thought warns us not to lose
ourselves in _problems that are vain_.



II


But if we cannot know anything but the finite and the particular,
always indeed only _this_ particular and _this_ finite, must we then
renounce (a dolorous renunciation 1) knowledge of _universal history_?
Without doubt, but with the double corollary that we are renouncing
what we have never possessed, because we could not possess it, and that
in consequence such renunciation is not at all painful.

'Universal history,' too, is not a concrete act or tact, but a 'claim,'
and a claim due to chroniclism and to its 'thing in itself,' and
to the strange proposal of closing the infinite progression, which
had been improperly opened, by means of progress to the infinite.
Universal history really tries to form a picture of all the things
that have happened to the human race, from its origins upon the earth
to the present moment. Indeed, it claims to do this from the origin of
things, or the creation, to the end of the world, since it would not
otherwise be truly universal. Hence its tendency to fill the abysses
of prehistory and of the origins with theological or naturalistic
fictions and to trace somehow the future, either with revelations
and prophecies, as in Christian universal history (which went as far
as Antichrist and the Last Judgment), or with previsions, as in the
universal histories of positivism, democratism, and socialism.

Such was its claim, but the result turns out to be different from
the intention, and it gets what it can--that is to say, a chronicle
that is always more or less of a mixture, or a poetical history
expressing some aspiration of the heart of man, or a true and proper
history, which is not universal, but _particular_, although it
embraces the lives of many peoples and of many times. Most frequently
these different elements are to be discerned side by side in the
same literary composition. Omitting chronicles more or less wide in
scope (though always narrow), poetical histories, and the various
contaminations of several different forms, we immediately perceive,
not as a result of logical deduction alone, but with a simple glance
at any one of the 'universal histories,' that 'universal histories,'
in so far as they are histories, or in that part of them in which they
are histories, resolve themselves into nothing else but particular
histories'--that is to say, they are due to a particular interest
centred in a particular problem, and comprehend only those facts that
form part of that interest and afford an answer to that particular
problem. For antiquity the example of the work of Polybius should
suffice for all, since it was he who most vigorously insisted upon
the need for a 'universal history' (καθολική ιστορία, ή των καθόλου
πραγμάτων σΰνταξις). For the Christian period we may cite the Civitas
Dei of Augustine, and for modern times the _Philosophy of History_
of Hegel (he also called it universal history, or _philosophische
Weltgeschichte_). But we observe here that the universal history which
Polybius desired and created was that more vast, more complex, more
political, and graver history which Roman hegemony and the formation
of the Roman world required, and therefore that it embraced only those
peoples which came into relation and conflict with Rome, and limited
itself almost altogether to the history of political institutions and
of military dispositions, according to the spiritual tendencies of
the author. Augustine, in his turn, attempted to render intelligible
the penetration of Paganism by Christianity, and with this object in
view he made use of the idea of two enemy cities, the terrestrial
and the celestial, of which the first was sometimes the adversary of
and sometimes preparatory to the second. Finally, Hegel treated the
same problem in his universal history as in his particular history
of philosophy--that is to say, the manner in which the spirit of a
philosophy of servitude to nature, or to the transcendental God, has
elevated itself to the consciousness of liberty. He cut out prehistory
from the philosophy of history, as he had cut it out from the history
of philosophy, and considered Oriental history very summarily, since it
did not offer much of interest to the prosecution of his design.

Naturalistic or cosmological romances will always be composed by those
who feel inspired to write them, and they will always find eager and
appreciative readers, especially among the lazy, who are pleased to
possess the 'secret of the world' in a few pages. And more or less
vast compilations will always be made of the histories of the East
and the West, of the Americas and Africa and Oceania. The strength
of a single individual does not suffice for these, even as regards
their compilation, so we now find groups of learned men or compilers
associated in that object (as though to give ocular evidence of the
absence of all intimate connexion). We have even seen recently certain
attempts at universal histories arranged on geographical principles,
like so many histories set side by side--European, Asiatic, African,
and so on--which insensibly assume the form of a historical dictionary.
And this or that particular history can always usefully take the name
of a 'universal history,' in the old sense of Polybius--that is to
say, as opposed to books that are less actual, less serious, and less
satisfactory, the books of those 'writers of particular things' (οἱ τάς
ἐπί μέρους γράφοντες πράξεις) who are led to make little things great
(τὰ μικρὰ μεγάλα ποιεῑν) and to indulge in lengthy anecdotes unworthy
of being recorded (περὶ τῶν μηδὲ μνήμης άξιων), and that owing to the
lack of a criterion (δί' ἀκρισίαν). In this sense, those times and
peoples whose politico-social development had produced, as it were,
a narrowing of the historical circle would be well advised to break
away from minute details and to envisage 'universal history'--that
is to say, a vaster history, which lies beyond particular histories.
This applies in particular to our Italy, which, since it had a
universalistic function at the time of the Renaissance, had universal
vision, and told the history of all the peoples in its own way, and
then limited itself to local history, then again elevated itself
to national history, and should now, even more than in the past,
extend itself over the vast fields of the history of all times past
and present. But the word 'universal,' which has value for the ends
above mentioned, will never designate the possession of a 'universal
history,' in the sense that we have refused to it. Such a history
disappears in the world of illusions, together with similar Utopias,
such, for instance, as the art that should serve as model for all
times, or universal justice valid for all time.


III

But in the same way that by the dissipation of the illusion of
universal art and of universal justice the intrinsically universal
character of particular art and of particular justice is not cancelled
(of the _Iliad_ or of the constitution of the Roman family), to negate
universal history does not mean to negate the universal in history.
Here, too, must be repeated what was said of the vain search for God
throughout the infinite series of the finite and found at every point
of it: _Und du bist ganz vor mir!_ That particular and that finite
is determined, in its particularity and finitude, by thought, and
therefore known together with the universal, the universal in that
particular form. The merely finite and particular does not exist
save as an abstraction. There is no abstract finite in poetry and in
art itself, which is the reign of the individual; but there is the
ingenuous finite, which is the undistinguished unity of finite and
infinite, which will be distinguished in the sphere of thought and
will in that way attain to a more lofty form of unity. And history
is thought, and, as such, thought of the universal, of the universal
in its concreteness, and therefore always determined in a particular
manner. There is no fact, however small it be, that can be otherwise
conceived (realized and qualified) than as universal. In its most
simple form--that is to say, in its essential form--history expresses
itself with judgments, inseparable syntheses of individual and
universal. And the individual is called the _subject_ of the judgment,
the universal the _predicate_, by old terminological tradition,
which it will perhaps be convenient to preserve. But for him who
dominates words with thought, the _true subject_ of history is just
the _predicate_, and the _true predicate_ the _subject_--that is to
say, the universal is determined in the judgment by individualizing
it. If this argument seems too abstruse and amounts to a philosophical
subtlety, it may be rendered obvious and altogether different from
a private possession of those known as philosophers by means of the
simple observation that everyone who reflects, upon being asked what is
the subject of the history of poetry, will certainly not reply Dante
or Shakespeare, or Italian or English poetry, or the series of poems
that are known to us, but _poetry_--that is to say, a universal; and
again, when asked what is the subject of social and political history,
the answer will not be Greece or Rome, France or Germany, or even all
these and others such combined, but _culture, civilization, progress,
liberty,_ or any other similar word--that is to say, a universal.

And here we can remove a great stumbling-block to the recognition
of the _identity of philosophy with history_. I have attempted to
renovate, modify, and establish this doctrine with many analyses and
with many arguments in another volume of my works.[1] It is, however,
frequently very difficult, being rather an object of irresistible
argument than of complete persuasion and adhesion. Seeking for the
various causes of this difficulty, I have come upon one which seems
to me to be the principal and fundamental. This is precisely the
conception of history not as living contemporary history, but as
history that is dead and belongs to the past, as _chronicle_ (or
philological history, which, as we know, can be reduced to chronicle).
It is undeniable that when history is taken as chronicle its identity
with philosophy cannot be made clear to the mind, because it does not
exist. But when chronicle has been reduced to its proper practical and
mnemonical function, and history has been raised to the knowledge of
the _eternal present_, it reveals itself as all one with philosophy,
which for its part is never anything but the thought of the eternal
present. This, be it well understood, provided always that the dualism
of ideas and facts has been superseded, of _vérités de raison_ and
_vérités de fait_, the concept of philosophy as contemplation of
vérités de raison, and that of history as the amassing of brute facts,
of coarse _vérités de fait_. We have recently found this tenacious
dualism in the act of renewing itself, disguised beneath the axiom that
_le propre de l'histoire est de savoir, le propre de la philosophie
est de comprendre_. This amounts to the absurd distinction of knowing
without understanding and of understanding without knowing, which would
thus be the doubly dis-heartening theoretical fate of man. But such a
dualism and the conception of the world which accompanies it, far from
being true philosophy, are the perpetual source whence springs that
imperfect attempt at philosophizing which is called _religion_ when
one is within its magic circle, _mythology_ when one has left it. Will
it be useful to attack transcendency, and to claim the character of
immanence for reality and for philosophy? It will certainly be of use;
but I do not feel the necessity of doing so, at any rate here and now.

And since history, properly understood, abolishes the idea of a
_universal history_, so philosophy, immanent and identical with
history, abolishes the idea of a _universal philosophy_--that is to
say, of the _closed_ system. The two negations correspond and are
indeed fundamentally one (because closed systems, like universal
histories, are cosmological romances), and both receive empirical
confirmation from the tendency of the best spirits of our day to
refrain from 'universal histories' and from 'definitive systems,'
leaving both to compilers, to believers, and to the credulous of
every sort. This tendency was implicit in the last great philosophy,
that of Hegel, but it was opposed in its own self by old survivals
and altogether betrayed in execution, so that this philosophy also
converts itself into a cosmological romance. Thus it may be said
that what at the beginning of the nineteenth century was merely a
simple _presentiment_ becomes changed into _firm consciousness_ at
the beginning of the twentieth. This defies the fears of the timid
lest the knowledge of the universal should be thus compromised,
and indeed maintains that only in this way can such knowledge be
truly and perpetually acquired, because dynamically obtained. Thus
history becoming _actual history_ and philosophy becoming _historical
philosophy_ have freed themselves, the one from the anxiety of not
being able to know that which is not known, only because it was or will
be known, and the other from the despair of never being able to attain
to definite truth--that is to say, both are freed from the phantom of
the 'thing in itself.'


[1] In the _Logic_, especially in Part II, Chapter IV.




IV


IDEAL GENESIS AND DISSOLUTION OF THE 'PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY'



I


The conception of the so-called 'philosophy of history' is perpetually
opposed to and resisted by the deterministic conception of history. Not
only is this clearly to be seen from inspection, but it is also quite
evident logically, because the 'philosophy of history' represents the
transcendental conception of the real, determinism the immanent.

But on examining the facts it is not less certain that historical
determinism perpetually generates the 'philosophy of history'; nor
is this fact less evidently logical than the preceding, because
determinism is naturalism, and therefore immanent, certainly, but
insufficiently and falsely immanent. Hence it should rather be
said that it wishes to be, but is not, immanent, and whatever its
efforts may be in the contrary direction, it becomes converted into
transcendency. All this does not present any difficulty to one who
has clearly in mind the conceptions of the transcendent and of the
immanent, of the philosophy of history as transcendency and of the
deterministic or naturalistic conception of history as a false
immanence. But it will be of use to see in more detail how this process
of agreements and oppositions is developed and solved with reference to
the problem of history.

"First collect the facts, then connect them causally"; this is the way
that the work of the historian is represented in the deterministic
conception. _Après la collection des faits, la recherche des causes,_
to repeat the very common formula in the very words of one of the most
eloquent and picturesque theorists of that school, Taine. Facts are
brute, dense, real indeed, but not illumined with the light of science,
not intellectualized. This intelligible character must be conferred
upon them by means of the search for causes. But it is very well known
what happens when one fact is linked to another as its cause, forming a
chain of causes and effects: we thus inaugurate an infinite regression,
and we never succeed in finding the cause or causes to which we can
finally attach the chain that we have been so industriously putting
together.

Some, maybe many, of the theorists of history get out of the difficulty
in a truly simple manner: they break or let fall at a certain point
their chain, which is already broken at another point at the other
end (the effect which they have undertaken to consider). They operate
with their fragment of chain as though it were something perfect and
closed in itself, as though a straight line divided at two points
should include space and be a figure. Hence, too, the doctrine that we
find among the methodologists of history: that it is only necessary
for history to seek out 'proximate' causes. This doctrine is intended
to supply a logical foundation to the above process. But who can ever
say what are the 'proximate causes'? Thought, since it is admitted
that it is unfortunately obliged to think according to the chain of
causes, will never wish to know anything but 'true' causes, be they
near or distant in space and time (space, like time, _ne fait rien
à l'affaire_). In reality, this theory is a fig-leaf, placed there
to cover a proceeding of which the historian, who is a thinker and a
critic, is ashamed, an act of will which is useful, but which for that
very reason is wilful. The fig-leaf, however, is a sign of modesty, and
as such has its value, because, if shame be lost, there is a risk that
it will finally be declared that the 'causes' at which an arbitrary
halt has been made are the 'ultimate' causes, the 'true' causes, thus
raising the caprice of the individual to the rank of an act creative
of the world, treating it as though it were God, the God of certain
theologians, whose caprice is truth. I should not wish again to quote
Taine just after having said this, for he is a most estimable author,
not on account of his mental constitution, but of his enthusiastic
faith in science; yet it suits me to quote him nevertheless. Taine,
in his search for causes, having reached a cause which he sometimes
calls the 'race' and sometimes the 'age,' as for instance in his
history of English literature, when he reaches the concept of the
'man of the North' or 'German,' with the character and intellect that
would be suitable to such a person--coldness of the senses, love
of abstract ideas, grossness of taste, and contempt for order and
regularity--gravely affirms: _Là s'arrête la recherche: on est tombé
sur quelque disposition primitive, sur quelque trait propre à toutes
les sensations, à toutes les conceptions d'un siècle ou d'une race, sur
quelque particularité inséparable de toutes les démarches de son esprit
et de son cour. Ce sont là les grandes causes, les causes universelles
et permanentes._ What that primitive and insurmountable thing contained
was known to Taine's imagination, but criticism is ignorant of it; for
criticism demands that the genesis of the facts or groups of facts
designated as 'age' and 'race' should be given, and in demanding their
genesis declares that they are neither 'universal' nor 'permanent,'
because no universal and permanent 'facts' are known, as far as I
am aware, certainly not _le Germain_ and _l'homme du Nord_; nor are
mummies facts, though they last some thousands of years, but not for
ever--they change gradually, but they do change.

Thus whoever adopts the deterministic conception of history, provided
that he decides to abstain from cutting short the inquiry that he has
undertaken in an arbitrary and fanciful manner, is of necessity obliged
to recognize that the method adopted does not attain the desired end.
And since he has begun to think history, although by means of an
insufficient method, no course remains to him save that of beginning
all over again and following a different path, or that of going
forward but changing his direction. The naturalistic presupposition,
which still holds its ground ("first collect the facts, then seek
the causes": what is more evident and more unavoidable than that?),
necessarily leads to the second alternative. But to adopt the second
alternative is to supersede determinism, it is to transcend nature
and its causes, it is to propose a method opposite to that hitherto
followed--that is to say, to renounce the category of cause for
another, which cannot be anything but that of end, an extrinsic and
transcendental end, which is the analogous opposite, corresponding to
the cause. Now the search for the transcendental end is the 'philosophy
of history.'

The consequent naturalist (I mean by this he who 'continues to think,'
or, as is generally said, to draw the consequences) cannot avoid this
inquiry, nor does he ever avoid it, in whatever manner he conceive
his new inquiry. This he cannot even do, when he tries, by declaring
that the end or 'ultimate cause' is unknowable, because (as elsewhere
remarked) an unknowable affirmed is an unknowable in some way known.
Naturalism is always crowned with a philosophy of history, whatever
its mode of formulation: whether it explain the universe as composed
of atoms that strike one another and produce history by means of their
various shocks and gyrations, to which they can also put an end by
returning to their primitive state of dispersion, whether the hidden
God be termed Matter or the Unconscious or something else, or whether,
finally, He be conceived as an Intelligence which avails itself of
the chain of causes in order to actualize His counsels. And every
philosopher of history is on the other hand a naturalist, because he
is a dualist and conceives a God and a world, an idea and a fact in
addition to or beneath the Idea, a kingdom of ends and a kingdom or
sub-kingdom of causes, a celestial city and one that is more or less
diabolical or terrene. Take any deterministic historical work and you
will find or discover in it, explicit or understood, transcendency (in
Taine, for example, it goes by the name of 'race' or of '_siècle,_'
which are true and proper deities); take any work of 'philosophy of
history' and dualism and naturalism will be found there (in Hegel, for
example, when he admits rebellious and impotent facts which resist or
are unworthy the dominion of the idea). And we shall see more and more
clearly how from the entrails of naturalism comes inevitably forth the
'philosophy of history.'



II


But the 'philosophy of history' is just as contradictory as the
deterministic conception from which it arises and to which it is
opposed. Having both accepted and superseded the method of linking
brute facts together, it no longer finds facts to link (for these
have already been linked together, as well as might be, by means
of the category of cause), but brute facts, on which it must confer
rather a 'meaning' than a linking, representing them as aspects of a
transcendental process, a theophany. Now those facts, in so far as
they are brute facts, are mute, and the transcendency of the process
requires an organ, not that of thought that thinks or produces facts,
but an extra-logical organ, in order to be conceived and represented
(such, for example, as thought which proceeds abstractly _a priori,_
in the manner of Fichte), and this is not to be found in the spirit,
save as a negative moment, as the void of effective logical thought.
The void of logical thought is immediately filled with _praxis,_ or
what is called sentiment, which then appears as poetry, by theoretical
refraction. There is an evident poetical character running through all
'philosophies of history.' Those of antiquity represented historical
events as strife between the gods of certain peoples or of certain
races or protectors of certain individuals, or between the god of light
and truth and the powers of darkness and lies. They thus expressed the
aspirations of peoples, groups, or individuals toward hegemony, or of
man toward goodness and truth. The most modern of modern forms is that
inspired by various national and ethical feelings (the Italian, the
Germanic, the Slav, etc.), or which represents the course of history as
leading to the kingdom of liberty, or as the passage from the Eden of
primitive communism, through the Middle Ages of slavery, servitude, and
wages, toward the restoration of communism, which shall no longer be
unconscious but conscious, no longer Edenic but human. In poetry, facts
are no longer facts but words, not reality but images, and so there
would be no occasion to censure them, if it remained pure poetry.
But it does not so remain, because those images and words are placed
there as ideas and facts--that is to say, as myths: progress, liberty,
economy, technique, science are myths, in so far as they are looked
upon as agents external to the facts. They are myths no less than God
and the Devil, Mars and Venus, Jove and Baal, or any other cruder forms
of divinity. And this is the reason why the deterministic conception,
after it has produced the 'philosophy of history,' which opposes it,
is obliged to oppose its own daughter in its turn, and to appeal from
the realm of ends to that of causal connexions, from imagination to
observation, from myths to facts.

The reciprocal confutation of historical determinism and the philosophy
of history, which makes of each a void or a nothing--that is to say,
a single void or nothing--seems to the eclectics as usual to be the
reciprocal fulfilment of two entities, which effect or should effect
an alliance for mutual support. And since eclecticism flourishes in
contemporary philosophy, mutato nomine, it is not surprising that
besides the duty of investigating the causes to history also is
assigned that of ascertaining the 'meaning' or the 'general plan' of
the course of history (see the works on the philosophy of history of
Labriola, Simmel, and Rickert). Since, too, writers on method are
wont to be empirical and therefore eclectic, we find that with them
also history is divided into the history which unites and criticizes
documents and reconstructs events, and 'philosophy of history' (see
Bernheim's manual, typical of all of them). Finally, since ordinary
thought is eclectic, nothing is more easy than to find agreement as to
the thesis that simple history, which presents the series of facts,
does not suffice, but that it is necessary that thought should return
to the already constituted chain of events, in order to discover
there the hidden design and to answer the questions as to whence we
come and whither we go. This amounts to saying that a 'philosophy of
history' must be posited side by side with history. This eclecticism,
which gives substance to two opposite voids and makes them join
hands, sometimes attempts to surpass itself and to mingle those two
fallacious sciences or parts of science. Then we hear 'philosophy of
history' defended, but with the caution that it must be conducted with
'scientific' and 'positive' method, by means of the search for the
cause, thus revealing the action of divine reason or providence.[1]
Ordinary thought quickly consents to this programme, but afterward
fails to carry it out.[2]

There is nothing new here either for those who know: 'philosophy
of history' to be constructed by means of 'positive methods,'
transcendency to be demonstrated by means of the methods of false
immanence, is the exact equivalent in the field of historical studies
to that "metaphysic to be constructed by means of the experimental
method" which was recommended by the neocritics (Zeller and others),
for it claimed, not indeed to supersede two voids that reciprocally
confute one another, but to make them agree together, and, after
having given substance to them, to combine them in a single substance.
I should not like to describe the impossibilities contained in the
above as the prodigies of an alchemist (the metaphor seems to be too
lofty), but rather as the medleys of bad cooks.


[1] See, for example, the work of Flint; but since, less radical than
Flint, Hegel and the Hegelians themselves also ended in admitting the
concourse of the two opposed methods, traces of this perversion are
also to be found in their 'philosophies of history.' Here, too, is to
be noted the false analogy by which Hegel was led to discover the same
relation between a priori and historical facts as between mathematics
and natural facts: _Man muss mit dem Kreise dessen, worin die
Prinzipien fallen, wenn man es so nennen will, a priori vertraut sein,
so gut als Kepler mit den Ellipsen, mit Kuben und Quadraten und mit den
Gedanken von Verhältnissen derselben_ a priori _schon vorher bekannt
sein musste, ehe er aus den empirischen Daten seine unsterblichen
Gesetze, welche aus Bestimmungen jener Kreise von Vorstellungen
bestehen, erfinden konnte._ (_Cf. Vorles. üb. d. Philos, d. Gesch.,_
ed. Brunstäd, pp. 107-108.)

[2] Not even the above-mentioned Flint carried it out, for he lost
him-self in preliminaries of historical documentation and never
proceeded to the promised construction.



III


The true remedy for the contradictions of historical determinism and of
the 'philosophy of history' is quite other than this. To obtain it, we
must accept the result of the preceding confutation, which shows that
both are futile, and reject, as lacking thought, both the 'designs'
of the philosophy of history and the causal chains of determinism.
When these two shadows have been dispersed we shall find ourselves
at the starting-place: we are again face to face with disconnected
brute facts, with facts that are connected, but not understood, for
which determinism had tried to employ the cement of causality, the
'philosophy of history,' the magic wand of finality. What shall we
do with these facts? How shall we make them clear rather than dense
as they were, organic rather than inorganic, intelligible rather
than unintelligible? Truly, it seems difficult to do anything with
them, especially to effect their desired transformation. The spirit
is helpless before that which is, or is supposed to be, external to
it. And when facts are understood in that way we are apt to assume
again that attitude of contempt of the philosophers for history which
has been well-nigh constant since antiquity almost to the end of the
eighteenth century (for Aristotle history was "less philosophical" and
less serious than poetry, for Sextus Empiricus it was "unmethodical
material"; Kant did not feel or understand history). The attitude
amounts to this: leave ideas to the philosophers and brute facts to the
historians--let us be satisfied with serious things and leave their
toys to the children.

But before having recourse to such a temptation, it will be prudent
to ask counsel of methodical doubt (which is always most useful), and
to direct the attention precisely upon those brute and disconnected
facts from which the causal method claims to start and before which we,
who are now abandoned by it and by its complement, the philosophy of
history, appear to find ourselves again. Methodical doubt will suggest
above all things the thought that those facts are a _presupposition_
that has _not been proved_, and it will lead to the inquiry as to
_whether the proof can be obtained_. Having attempted the proof, we
shall finally arrive at the conclusion that _those facts really do not
exist._

For who, as a matter of fact, affirms their existence? Precisely the
spirit, at the moment when it is about to undertake the search for
causes. But when accomplishing that act the spirit does not already
possess the brute facts (_d'abord la collection des faits_) and then
seek the causes (_après, la recherche des causes_); but it makes
the _facts brute_ by that very act--that is to say, it posits them
itself in that way, because it is of use to it so to posit them.
The search for causes, undertaken by history, is not in any way
different from the procedure of naturalism, already several times
illustrated, which abstractly analyses and classifies reality. And
to illustrate abstractly and to classify implies at the same time to
judge in classifying--that is to say, to treat facts, not as acts of
the spirit, conscious in the spirit that thinks them, but as external
brute facts. The _Divine Comedy_ is that poem which we create again
in our imagination in all its particulars as we read it and which we
understand critically as a particular determination of the spirit,
and to which we therefore assign its place in history, with all its
surroundings and all its relations. But when this actuality of our
thought and imagination has come to an end--that is to say, when that
mental process is completed--we are able, by means of a new act of
the spirit, separately to analyse its elements. Thus, for instance,
we shall classify the concepts relating to 'Florentine civilization,'
or to 'political poetry,' and say that the _Divine Comedy_ was an
effect of Florentine civilization, and this in its turn an effect
of the strife of the communes, and the like. We shall also thus
have prepared the way for those absurd problems which used to annoy
de Sanctis so much in relation to the work of Dante, and which he
admirably described when he said that they arise only when lively
æsthetic expression has grown cold and poetical work has fallen into
the hands of dullards addicted to trifles. But if we stop in time and
do not enter the path of those absurdities, if we restrict ourselves
purely and simply to the naturalistic moment, to classification, and
to the classificatory judgment (which is also causal connexion), in an
altogether practical manner, without drawing any deductions from it, we
shall have done nothing that is not perfectly legitimate; indeed, we
shall be exercising our right and bowing to a rational necessity, which
is that of naturalizing, when naturalization is of use, but not beyond
those limits. Thus the materialization of the facts and the external
or causal binding of them together are altogether justified as pure
naturalism. And even the maxim which bids us to stop at 'proximate'
causes--that is to say, not to force classification so far that it
loses all practical utility--will find its justification. To place
the concept of the _Divine Comedy_ in relation to that of 'Florentine
civilization' may be of use, but it will be of no use whatever,
or infinitely less use, to place it in relation to the class of
'Indo-European civilization' or to the 'civilization of the white man.'



IV


Let us then return with greater confidence to the point of departure,
the true point of departure--that is to say, not to that of facts
already disorganized and naturalized, but to that of the mind
that thinks and constructs the fact. Let us raise up the debased
countenances of the calumniated 'brute facts,' and we shall see the
light of thought resplendent upon their foreheads. And that true point
of departure will reveal itself not merely as a point of departure, but
both as a point of arrival and of departure, not as the first step in
historical construction, but the whole of history in its construction,
which is also its self-construction. Historical determinism, and all
the more 'philosophy of history,' leave the _reality of history_ behind
them, though they directed their journey thither, a journey which
became so erratic and so full of useless repetitions.

We shall make the ingenuous Taine confess that what we are saying
is the truth when we ask him what he means by the _collection des
faits_ and learn from him in reply that the collection in question
consists of two stages or moments, in the first of which documents
are revived in order to attain, _à travers la distance des temps,
l'homme vivant, agissant, doué de passions, muni d'habitudes, avec
sa voix et sa physionomie, avec ses gestes et ses habits, distinct
et complet comme celui que tout à l'heure nous avons quitté dans la
rue;_ and in the second is sought and found _sous l'homme extérieur
l'homme intérieur, "l'homme invisible," "le centre," "le groupe des
facultés et des sentiments qui produit le reste," "le drame intérieur,"
"la psychologie."_ Something very different, then, from collections
de faits I If the things mentioned by our author really do come to
pass, if we really do make live again in imagination individuals and
events, and if we think what is within them--that is to say, if we
think the synthesis of intuition and concept, which is thought in its
concreteness--history is already achieved: what more is wanted? There
is nothing more to seek. Taine replies: "We must seek causes." That is
to say, we must slay the living 'fact' thought by thought, separate
its abstract elements--a useful thing, no doubt, but useful for memory
and practice. Or, as is the custom of Taine, we must misunderstand and
exaggerate the value of the function of this abstract analysis, to lose
ourselves in the mythology of races and ages, or in other different but
none the less similar things. Let us beware how we slay poor facts, if
we wish to think as historians, and in so far as we are such and really
think in that way we shall not feel the necessity for having recourse
either to the extrinsic bond of causes, historical determinism, or to
that which is equally extrinsic of transcendental ends, philosophy of
history. The fact historically thought has no cause and no end outside
itself, but only in itself, coincident with its real qualities and with
its qualitative reality. Because (it is well to note in passing) the
determination of facts as real facts indeed, but of _unknown nature_,
asserted but not understood, is itself also an illusion of naturalism
(which thus heralds its other illusion, that of the 'philosophy of
history'). In thought, reality and quality, existence and essence, are
all one, and it is not possible to affirm a fact as real without at the
same time knowing what fact it is--that is, without qualifying it.

Returning to and remaining in or moving in the concrete fact, or,
rather, making of oneself thought that thinks the fact concretely, we
experience the continual formation and the continual progress of our
historical thought and also make clear to ourselves the history of
historiography, which proceeds in the same manner. And we see how (I
limit myself to this, in order not to allow the eye to wander too far)
from the days of the Greeks to our own historical understanding has
always been enriching and deepening itself, not because abstract causes
and transcendental ends of human things have ever been recovered,
but only because an ever increasing consciousness of them has been
acquired. Politics and morality, religion and philosophy and art,
science and culture and economy, have become more complex concepts and
at the same time better determined and unified both in themselves and
with respect to the whole. Correlatively with this, the histories of
these forms of activity have become ever more complex and more firmly
united. We know 'the causes' of civilization as little as did the
Greeks; and we know as little as they of the god or gods who control
the fortunes of humanity. But we know the theory of civilization better
than did the Greeks, and, for instance, we know (as they did not know,
or did not know with equal clearness and security) that poetry is an
eternal form of the theoretic spirit, that regression or decadence is a
relative concept, that the world is not divided into ideas and shadows
of ideas, or into potencies and acts, that slavery is not a category
of the real, but a historical form of economic, and so forth. Thus it
no longer occurs to anyone (save to the survivals or fossils, still to
be found among us) to write the history of poetry on the principle of
the pedagogic ends that the poets are supposed to have had in view:
on the contrary, we strive to determine the forms expressive of their
sentiments. We are not at all bewildered when we find ourselves before
what are called 'decadences,' but we seek out what new and greater
thing was being developed by means of their dialectic. We do not
consider the work of man to be miserable and illusory, and aspiration
and admiration for the skies and for the ascesis joined thereunto
and averse to earth as alone worthy of admiration and imitation. We
recognize the reality of power in the act, and in the shadows the
solidity of the ideas, and on earth heaven. Finally, we do not find
that the possibility of social life is lost owing to the disappearance
of the system of slavery. Such a disappearance would have been the
catastrophe of reality, if slaves were natural to reality--and so forth.

This conception of history and the consideration of historiographical
work in itself make it possible for us to be just toward historical
determinism and to the 'philosophy of history,' which, by their
continual reappearance, have continually pointed to the gaps in our
knowledge, both historical and philosophical, and with their false
provisional solutions have heralded the correct solutions of the new
problems which we have been propounding. Nor has it been said that
they will henceforth cease to exercise such a function (which is the
beneficial function of Utopias of every sort). And although historical
determinism and the 'philosophy of history' have no history, because
they do not develop, they yet receive a content from the relation in
which they stand to history, which does develop--that is to say,
history develops in them, notwithstanding their covering, extrinsic
to their content, which compels to think even him who proposes to
schematize and to imagine without thinking. For there is a great
difference between the determinism that can now appear, after Descartes
and Vico and Kant and Hegel, and that which appeared after Aristotle;
between the philosophy of history of Hegel and Marx and that of
gnosticism and Christianity. Transcendency and false immanency are at
work in both these conceptions respectively; but the abstract forms
and mythologies that have appeared in more mature epochs of thought
contain this new maturity in themselves. In proof of this, let us
pause but a moment (passing by the various forms of naturalism) at
the case of the 'philosophy of history.' We observe already a great
difference between the philosophy of history, as it appears in the
Homeric world, and that of Herodotus, with whom the conception of the
anger of the gods is a simulacrum of the moral law, which spares the
humble and treads the proud underfoot; from Herodotus to the Fate of
the Stoics, a law to which the gods themselves are subjected, and from
this to the conception of Providence, which appears in late antiquity
as wisdom that rules the world; from this pagan providence again to
Christianity, which is divine justice, evangelical preparation, and
educative care of the human race, and so on, to the refined providence
of the theologians, which as a rule excludes divine intervention
and operates by means of secondary causes, to that of Vico, which
operates as dialectic of the spirit, to the Idea of Hegel, which is the
gradual conquest of the consciousness of self, which liberty achieves
during the course of history, till we finally reach the mythology of
progress and of civilization, which still persists and is supposed to
tend toward the final abolition of prejudices and superstitions, to
be carried out by means of the increasing power and divulgation of
positive science.

In this way the 'philosophy of history' and historical determinism
sometimes attain to the thinness and transparency of a veil, which
covers and at the same time reveals the concreteness of the real in
thought. Mechanical causes thus appear idealized, transcendent deities
humanized, and facts are in great part divested of their brutal aspect.
But however thin the veil may be, it remains a veil, and however
clear the truth may be, it is not altogether clear, for at bottom
the false persuasion still persists that history is constructed with
the 'material' of brute facts, with the 'cement' of causes, and with
the 'magic' of ends, as with three successive or concurrent methods.
The same thing occurs with religion, which in lofty minds liberates
itself almost altogether from vulgar beliefs, as do its ethics from the
heteronomy of the divine command and from the utilitarianism of rewards
and punishments. Almost altogether, but not altogether, and for this
reason religion will never be philosophy, save by negating itself, and
thus the 'philosophy of history' and historical determinism will become
history only by negating themselves. The reason is that as long as they
proceed in a positive manner dualism will also persist, and with it the
torment of scepticism and agnosticism as a consequence.

The negation of the philosophy of history, in history understood
concretely, is its ideal dissolution, and since that so-called
philosophy is nothing but an abstract and negative moment, our reason
for affirming that _the philosophy of history_ is dead is clear. It
is dead in its positivity, dead as a body of doctrine, dead in this
way, with all the other conceptions and forms of the transcendental.
I do not wish to attach to my brief (but in my opinion sufficient)
treatment of the argument the addition of an explanation which to some
will appear to be (as it appears to me) but little philosophical and
even somewhat trivial. Notwithstanding, since I prefer the accusation
of semi-triviality to that of equivocation, I shall add that since the
criticism of the 'concepts' of cause and transcendental finality does
not forbid the use of these 'words,' when they are simple words (to
talk, for example, in an imaginative way of liberty as of a goddess, or
to say, when about to undertake a study of Dante, that our intention is
to 'seek the cause' or 'causes' of this or that work or act of his),
so nothing forbids our continuing to talk of 'philosophy of history'
and of philosophizing history, meaning the necessity of treating or of
a better treatment of this or that historical problem. Neither does
anything forbid our calling the researches of historical gnoseology
'philosophy of history,' although in this case we are treating the
history, not properly of _history_, but of _historiography_, two things
which are wont to be designated with the same word in Italian as in
other languages. Neither do we wish to prevent the statement (as did a
German professor years ago) that the 'philosophy of history' must be
treated as 'sociology'--that is to say, the adornment with that ancient
title of so-called sociology, the empirical science of the state, of
society and of culture.

These denominations are all permissible in virtue of the same right
as that invoked by the adventurer Casanova when he went before the
magistrates in order to justify himself for having changed his
name--"the right of every man to the letters of the alphabet." But the
question treated above is not one of the letters of the alphabet. The
'philosophy of history,' of which we have briefly shown the genesis and
the dissolution, is not one that is used in various senses, but a most
definite mode of conceiving history--the transcendental mode.




V


THE POSITIVITY OF HISTORY


We therefore meet the well-known saying of Fustel de Coulanges that
there are certainly "history and philosophy, but not the philosophy
of history," with the following: there is neither philosophy nor
history, nor philosophy of history, but history which is philosophy
and philosophy which is history and is intrinsic to history. For this
reason, all the controversies--and foremost of all those concerned
with progress--which philosophers, methodologists of history, and
sociologists believe to belong to their especial province, and flaunt
at the beginning and the end of their treatises, are reduced for us to
simple problems of philosophy, with historical motivation, all of them
connected with the problems of which philosophy treats.

In controversies relating to progress it is asked whether the work of
man be fertile or sterile, whether it be lost or preserved, whether
history have an end, and if so of what sort, whether this end be
attainable in time or only in the infinite, whether history be progress
or regress, or an interchange between progress and regress, greatness
and decadence, whether good or evil prevail in it, and the like. When
these questions have been considered with a little attention we shall
see that they resolve themselves substantially into three points: the
conception of development, that of end, and that of value. That is to
say, they are concerned with the whole of reality, and with history
only when it is precisely the whole of reality. For this reason they
do not belong to supposed particular sciences, to the philosophy of
history, or to sociology, but to philosophy and to history in so far
as it is philosophy. When the ordinary current terminology has been
translated into philosophical terms it calls forth immediately the
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis by means of which those problems
have been thought and solved during the course of philosophy, to
which the reader desirous of instruction must be referred. We can
only mention here that the conception of reality as development is
nothing but the synthesis of the two one-sided opposites, consisting
of permanency without change and of change without permanency, of
an identity without diversity and of a diversity without identity,
for development is a perpetual surpassing, which is at the same
time a perpetual conservation. From this point of view one of the
conceptions that has had the greatest vogue in historical books, that
of _historical circles,_ is revealed as an equivocal attempt to issue
forth from a double one-sidedness and a falling back into it, owing to
an equivocation. Because either the series of circles is conceived as
composed of identicals and we have only permanency, or it is conceived
as of things diverse and we have only change. But if, on the contrary,
we conceive it as circularity that is perpetually identical and at the
same time perpetually diverse, in this sense it coincides with the
conception of development itself.

In like manner, the opposite theses, as to the attainment or the
impossibility of attainment of the end of history, reveal their common
defect of positing the end as _extrinsic_ to history, conceiving
of it either as that which can be reached in time (_progressus ad
finitum_), or as that which can never be attained, but only infinitely
approximated (_progressus ad infinitum_). But where the end has been
correctly conceived as _internal_--that is to say, all one with
development itself--we must conclude that it is attained at every
instant, and at the same time not attained, because every attainment
is the formation of a new prospect, whence we have at every moment the
satisfaction of possession, and arising from this the dissatisfaction
which drives us to seek a new possession.[1]

Finally, the conceptions of history as a passage from evil to good
(progress), or from good to evil (decadence, regression), take their
origin from the same error of entifying and making extrinsic good and
evil, joy and sorrow (which are the dialectical construction of reality
itself). To unite them in the eclectic conception of an alternation of
good and evil, of progress and regress, is incorrect. The true solution
is that of progress understood not as a passage from evil to good, as
though from one state to another, but as the passage from the good to
the better, in which the evil is the good itself seen in the light of
the better.

These are all philosophical solutions which are at variance with
the superficial theses of controversialists (dictated to them by
sentimental motives or imaginative combinations, really mythological
or resulting in mythologies), to the same extent that they are in
accordance with profound human convictions and with the tireless toil,
the trust, the courage, which constitute their ethical manifestations.

By drawing the consequences of the dialectical conception of progress
something more immediately effective can be achieved in respect to the
practice and history of historiography. For we find in that conception
the origin of a historical maxim, in the mouth of every one, yet
frequently misunderstood and frequently violated--that is to say, that
to history pertains not to _judge,_ but to _explain,_ and that it
should be not _subjective_ but _objective._

Misunderstood, because the judging in question is often taken in the
sense of logical judgment, of that judgment which is thinking itself,
and the subjectivity, which would thus be excluded, would be neither
more nor less than the subjectivity of thought. In consequence of this
misunderstanding we hear historians being advised to purge themselves
of theories, to refrain from the disputes arising from them, to
restrict themselves to facts, collecting, arranging, and squeezing out
the sap (even by the statistical method). It is impossible to follow
such advice as this, as may easily be seen, for such 'abstention from
thought' reveals itself as really abstention from 'seriousness of
thought,' as a surreptitious attaching of value to the most vulgar and
contradictory thoughts, transmitted by tradition, wandering about idly
in the mind, or flashing out as the result of momentary caprice. The
maxim is altogether false, understood or misunderstood in this way,
and it must be taken by its opposite--namely, that history must always
judge strictly, and that it must always be energetically subjective
without allowing itself to be confused by the conflicts in which
thought engages or by the risks that it runs. For it is thought itself,
and thought alone, which gets over its own difficulties and dangers,
without falling even here into that frivolous eclecticism which tries
to find a middle term between our judgment and that of others, and
suggests various neutral and insipid forms of judgment.

But the true and legitimate meaning, the original motive for that
'judging,' that 'subjectivity,' which it condemns, is that history
should not apply to the deeds and the personages that are its material
the qualifications of good and evil, as though there really were
good and evil facts in the world, people who are good and people
who are evil. And it is certainly not to be denied that innumerable
historiographers, or those who claim to be historiographers, have
really striven and still strive along those lines, in the vain and
presumptuous attempt to reward the good and punish the evil, to qualify
historical epochs as representing progress or decadence--in a word,
to settle what is good and what is evil, as though it were a question
of separating one element from another in a compound, hydrogen from,
oxygen.

Whoever desires to observe intrinsically the above maxim, and by
doing so to set himself in accordance with the dialectic conception
of progress, must in truth look upon every trace or vestige of
propositions affirming evil, regression, or decadence as real facts,
as a sign of imperfection--in a word, he must condemn every trace
or vestige of _negative_ judgments. If the course of history is not
the passage from evil to good, or alternative good and evil, but the
passage from the good to the better, if history should explain and
not condemn, it will pronounce only _positive_ judgments, and will
forge chains of good, so solid and so closely linked that it will
not be possible to introduce into them even a little link of evil or
to interpose empty spaces, which in so far as they are empty would
not represent good but evil. A fact that seems to be only evil, an
epoch that appears to be one of complete decadence, can be nothing
but a _non-historical_ fact--that is to say, one which has not been
historically treated, not penetrated by thought, and which has remained
the prey of sentiment and imagination.

Whence comes the phenomenology of good and evil, of sin and repentance,
of decadence and resurrection, save from the consciousness of the
agent, from the act which is in labour to produce a new form of
life?[2] And in that act the adversary who opposed us is in the
wrong; the state from which we wish to escape, and from which we
are escaping, is unhappy; the new one toward which we are tending
becomes symbolized as a dreamed-of felicity to be attained, or as
a past condition to restore, which is therefore most beautiful in
recollection (which here is not recollection, but imagination). Every
one knows how these things present them-selves to us in the course
of history, manifesting themselves in poetry, in Utopias, in stories
with a moral, in detractions, in apologies, in myths of love, of
hate, and the like. To the heretics of the Middle Ages and to the
Protestant reformers the condition of the primitive Christians seemed
to be most lovely and most holy, that of papal Christians most evil
and debased. The Sparta of Lycurgus and the Rome of Cincinnatus seemed
to the Jacobins to be as admirable as France under the Carlovingians
and the Capetians was detestable. The humanists looked upon the lives
of the ancient poets and sages as luminous and the life of the Middle
Ages as dense darkness. Even in times near our own has been witnessed
the glorification of the Lombard communes and the depreciation of
the Holy Roman Empire, and the very opposite of this, according as
the facts relating to these historical events were reflected in the
consciousness of an Italian longing for the independence of Italy or
of a German upholding the holy German empire of Prussian hegemony.
And this will always happen, because such is the phenomenology of the
practical consciousness, and these practical valuations will always
be present to some extent in the works of historians. As works, these
are not and cannot ever be pure history, quintessential history; if in
no other way, then in their phrasing and use of metaphors they will
reflect the repercussion of practical needs and efforts directed toward
the future. But the historical consciousness, as such, is logical and
not practical consciousness, and indeed makes the other its object;
history once lived has become in it thought, and the antitheses of will
and feeling that formerly offered resistance have no longer a place in
thought.

For if there are no good and evil facts, but facts that are always good
when understood in their intimate being and concreteness, there are not
opposite sides, but that wider side that embraces both the adversaries
and which happens just to be historical consideration. Historical
consideration, therefore, recognizes as of equal right the Church of
the catacombs and that of Gregory VII, the tribunes of the Roman people
and the feudal barons, the Lombard League and the Emperor Barbarossa.
History never metes out justice, but always _justifies_; she could not
carry out the former act without making herself unjust--that is to say,
confounding thought with life, taking the attractions and repulsions of
sentiment for the judgments of thought.

Poetry is satisfied with the expression of sentiment, and it is worthy
of note that a considerable historian, Schlosser, wishing to reserve
for himself the right and duty of judging historical facts with
Kantian austerity and abstraction, kept his eyes fixed on the _Divine
Comedy_--that is to say, a poetical work--as his model of treatment.
And since there are poetical elements in all myths, we understand why
the conception of history known as _dualistic_--that is to say, of
history as composed of two currents, which mix but never resolve in one
another their waters of good and evil, truth and error, rationality and
irrationality--should have formed a conspicuous part, not only of the
Christian religion, but also of the mythologies (for they really are
such) of humanism and of illuminism. But the detection of this problem
of the duality of values and its solution in the superior unity of
the conception of development is the work of the nineteenth century,
which on this account and on account of other solutions of the same
kind (certainly not on account of its philological and archæological
richness, which was relatively common to the four preceding centuries)
has been well called 'the century of history.'

Not only, therefore, is history unable to discriminate between facts
that are good and facts that are evil, and between epochs that are
progressive and those that are regressive, but it does not begin until
the psychological conditions which rendered possible such antitheses
have been superseded and substituted by an act of the spirit, which
seeks to ascertain what function the fact or the epoch previously
condemned has fulfilled--that is to say, what it has produced of its
own in the course of development, and therefore what it has produced.
And since all facts and epochs are productive in their own way, not
only is not one of them to be condemned in the light of history, but
all are to be praised and venerated. A condemned fact, a fact that is
repugnant, is not yet a historical proposition, it is hardly even the
premiss of a historical problem to be formulated. A negative history is
a non-history so long as its negative process substitutes itself for
thought, which is affirmative, and does not maintain itself within its
practical and moral bounds and limit itself to poetical expressions and
empirical modes of representation, in respect of all of which we can
certainly speak (speak and not think), as we do speak at every moment,
of bad men and periods of decadence and regression.

If the vice of negative history arises from the separation, the
solidification, and the opposition of the dialectical antitheses
of good and evil and the transformation of the ideal moments of
development into entities, that other deviation of history which
may be known as elegiac history arises from the misunderstanding of
another necessity of that conception--that is to say, the perpetual
constancy, the perpetual conservation of what has been acquired. But
this is also false by definition. What is preserved and enriched
in the course of history is history itself, spirituality. The past
does not live otherwise than in the present, as the force of the
present, resolved and transformed in the present. Every particular
form, individual, action, institution, work, thought, is destined to
perish: even art, which is called eternal (and is so in a certain
sense), perishes, for it does not live, save to the extent that it
is reproduced, and therefore transfigured and surrounded with new
light, in the spirit of posterity. Finally, truth itself perishes,
particular and determined truth, because it is not rethinkable, save
when included in the system of a vaster truth, and therefore at the
same time transformed. But those who do not rise to the conception of
pure historical consideration, those who attach themselves with their
whole soul to an individual, a work, a belief, an institution, and
attach themselves so strongly that they cannot separate themselves
from it in order to objectify it before themselves and think it, are
prone to attribute the immortality which belongs to the spirit in
universal to the spirit in one of its particular and determined forms;
and since that form, notwithstanding their efforts, dies, and dies
in their arms, the universe darkens before their gaze, and the only
history that they can relate is the sad one of the agony and death of
beautiful things. This too is poetry, and very lofty poetry. Who can do
otherwise than weep at the loss of a beloved one, at separation from
something dear to him, cannot see the sun extinguished and the earth
tremble and the birds cease their flight and fall to earth, like Dante,
on the loss of his beloved "who was so beautiful"? But history is never
_history of death_, but _history of life_, and all know that the proper
commemoration of the dead is the knowledge of what they did in life,
of what they produced that is working in us, the history of their life
and not of their death, which it behoves a gentle soul to veil, a soul
barbarous and perverse to exhibit in its miserable nakedness and to
contemplate with unhealthy persistence. For this reason all histories
which narrate the death and not the life of peoples, of states, of
institutions, of customs, of literary and artistic ideals, of religious
conceptions, are to be considered false, or, we repeat, simply poetry,
where they attain to the level of poetry. People grow sad and suffer
and lament because that which was is no longer. This would resolve
itself into a mere tautology (because if it was, it is evident that it
is no longer), were it not conjoined to the neglect of recognizing what
of that past has not perished--that is to say, that past in so far as
it is not past but present, the eternal life of the past. It is in this
neglect, in the incorrect view arising out of it, that the falsity of
such histories resides.

It sometimes happens that historians, intent upon narrating those
scenes of anguish in a lugubrious manner and upon celebrating the
funerals which it pleases them to call histories, remain partly
astounded and partly scandalized when they hear a peal of laughter, a
cry of joy, a sigh of satisfaction, or find an enthusiastic impulse
springing up from the documents that they are searching. How, they
ask, could men live, make love, reproduce their species, sing, paint,
discuss, when the trumps were sounding east and west to announce the
end of the world? But they do not see that such an end of the world
exists only in their own imaginations, rich in elegiac motives, but
poor in understanding. They do not perceive that such importunate
trumpet-calls have never in reality existed. These are very useful,
on the other hand, for reminding those who may have forgotten it that
history always pursues her indefatigable work, and that her apparent
agonies are the travail of a new birth, and that what are believed to
be her expiring sighs are moans that announce the birth of a new world.
History differs from the individual who dies because, in the words of
Alcmæon of Crete, he is not able τὴν ἀρχήν τῷ τέλει προσάψαι, to join
his beginning to his end: history never dies, because she always joins
her beginning to her end.


[1] For the complete development of these conceptions, see my study
of _The Conception of Becoming_, in the _Saggio sullo Hegel seguito
da altri scritti di storia della filosofia_, pp. 149-175 (Bari,
1913). (English translation of the work on Hegel by Douglas Ainslie.
Macmillan, London.)

[2] For what relates to this section, see my treatment of _Judgments of
Value,_ in the work before cited.




VI


THE HUMANITY OF HISTORY


Enfranchising itself from servitude to extra-mundane caprice and
to blind natural necessity, freeing itself from transcendency and
from false immanence (which is in its turn transcendency), thought
conceives history as the work of man, as the product of human will
and intellect, and in this manner enters that form of history which
we shall call _humanistic._ This humanism first appears as in simple
contrast to nature or to extra-mundane powers, and posits dualism.
On the one side is man, with his strength, his intelligence, his
reason, his prudence, his will for the good; on the other there is
something that resists him, strives against him, upsets his wisest
plans, breaks the web that he has been weaving and obliges him to weave
it all over again. History, envisaged from the view-point of this
conception, is developed entirely from the first of these two sides,
because the other does not afford a dialectical element which can be
continually met and superseded by the first, giving rise to a sort of
interior collaboration, but represents the absolutely extraneous, the
capricious, the accidental, the meddler, the ghost at the feast. Only
in the former do we find rationality combined with human endeavour,
and thus the possibility of a rational explication of history. What
comes from the other side is announced, but not explained: it is not
material for history, but at the most for chronicle. This first form of
humanistic history is known under the various names of _rationalistic,
intellectualistic, abstractistic, individualistic, psychological_
history, and especially under that of _pragmatic_ history. It is a
form generally condemned by the consciousness of our times, which has
employed these designations, especially _rationalism_ and _pragmatism_,
to represent a particular sort of historiographical insufficiency and
inferiority, and has made proverbial the most characteristic pragmatic
explanations of institutions and events, as types of misrepresentation
into which one must beware of falling if one wish to think history
seriously. But as happens in the progress of culture and science, even
if the condemnation be cordially accepted and no hesitation entertained
as to drawing practical consequences from it in the field of actuality,
there is not an equally clear consciousness of the reasons for this,
or of the thought process by means of which it has been attained. This
process we may briefly describe as follows.

Pragmatic finds the reasons for historical facts in man, but in man
_in so far as he is an individual made abstract_, and thus opposed
as such not only to the universe, but to other men, who have also
been made abstract. History thus appears to consist of the mechanical
action and reaction of beings, each one of whom is shut up in himself.
Now no historical process is intelligible under such an arrangement,
for the sum of the addition is always superior to the numbers added.
To such an extent is this true that, not knowing which way to turn
in order to make the sum come out right, it became necessary to
excogitate the doctrine of 'little causes,' which were supposed to
produce 'great effects.' This doctrine is absurd, for it is clear
that great effects can only have real causes (if the illegitimate
conceptions of great and small, of cause and effect, be applicable
here). Such a formula, then, far from expressing the law of historical
facts, unconsciously expresses the defects of the doctrine, which
is inadequate for its purpose. And since the rational explanation
fails, there arise crowds of fancies to take its place, which are all
conceived upon the fundamental motive of the abstract individual. The
pragmatic explanation of religions is characteristic of this; these
are supposed to have been produced and maintained in the world by the
economic cunning of the priests, taking advantage of the ignorance
and credulity of the masses. But historical pragmatic does not
always present itself in the guise of this egoistic and pessimistic
inspiration. It is not fair to accuse it of egoism and utilitarianism,
when the true accusation should, as we have already said, be levelled
at its abstract individualism. This abstract individualism could be and
sometimes was conceived even as highly moral, for we certainly find
among the pragmatics sage legislators, good kings, and great men, who
benefit humanity by means of science, inventions, and well-organized
institutions. And if the greedy priest arranged the deceit of
religions, if the cruel despot oppressed weak and innocent people, and
if error was prolific and engendered the strangest and most foolish
customs, yet the goodness of the enlightened monarch and legislator
created the happy epochs, caused the arts to flourish, encouraged
poets, aided discoveries, encouraged industries. From these pragmatic
conceptions is derived the verbal usage whereby we speak of the age of
Pericles, of that of Augustus, of that of Leo X, or of that of Louis
XIV. And since fanciful explanations do not limit themselves merely
to individuals physically existing, but also employ facts and small
details, which are also made abstract and shut up in themselves, being
thus also turned into what Vico describes as 'imaginative universals,'
in like manner all these modes of explanation known as 'catastrophic'
and making hinge the salvation or the ruin of a whole society upon the
virtue of some single fact are also derived from pragmatic. Examples
of this, which have also become proverbial, because they refer to
concepts that have been persistently criticized by the historians of
our time, are the fall of the Roman Empire, explained as the result
of barbarian invasions, European civilization of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, as the result of the Crusades, the renascence
of classical literatures, as the result of the Turkish conquest of
Constantinople and of the immigration of the learned Byzantines into
Italy--and the like. And in just the same way as when the conception
of the single individual did not furnish a sufficient explanation
recourse was for that reason had to a multiplicity of individuals, to
their co-operation and conflicting action, so here, when the sole cause
adduced soon proved itself too narrow, an attempt was made to make up
for the insufficiency of the method by the search for and enumeration
of multiple historical causes. This enumeration threatened to proceed
to the infinite, but, finite or infinite as it might be, it never
explained the process to be explained, for the obvious reason that the
continuous is never made out of the discontinuous, however much the
latter may be multiplied and solidified. The so-called theory of the
causes or factors of history, which survives in modern consciousness,
together with several other mental habits of pragmatic, although
generally inclined to follow other paths, is rather a confession of
powerlessness to dominate history by means of individual causes,
or causes individually conceived, than a theory; far from being a
solution, it is but a reopening of the problem.

Pragmatic therefore fails to remain human--that is to say, to develop
itself as rationality; even in the human side to which it clings and
in which it wishes to maintain and oppose itself to the natural or
extra-natural; and having already made individuals irrational and
unhuman by making them abstract, it gradually has recourse to other
historical factors, and arrives finally at natural causes, which do
not differ at all in their abstractness from other individual causes.
This means that pragmatic, which had previously asserted itself as
humanism, falls back into naturalism, from which it had distinctly
separated itself. And it falls into it all the more, seeing that, as
has been noted, human individuals have been made abstract, not only
among themselves, but toward the rest of the universe, which remains
facing them, as though it were an enemy. What is it that really rules
history according to this conception? Is it man, or extra-human powers,
natural or divine? The claim that history exists only as an individual
experience is not maintainable; and in the pragmatic conception another
agent in history is always presumed, an extra-human being which, at
different times and to different thinkers, is known as fate, chance,
fortune, nature, God, or by some other name. During the period at which
pragmatic history flourished, and there was much talk of reason and
wisdom, an expression of a monarchical or courtly tinge is to be found
upon the lips of a monarch and of a philosopher who was his friend:
homage was paid to _sa Majesté le Hasard!_ Here too there is an attempt
to patch up the difficulty and to seek eclectic solutions; in order
to get out of it, we find pragmatic affirming that human affairs are
conducted half by prudence and half by fortune, that intelligence
contributes one part, fortune another, and so on. But who will assign
the just share to the two competitors? Will not he who does assign it
be the true and only maker of history? And since he who does assign
it cannot be man, we see once again how pragmatic leads directly to
transcendency and irrationality through its naturalism. It leads to
irrationality, accompanied by all its following of inconveniences
and by all the other dualisms that it brings with it and which are
particular aspects of itself, such as the impossibility of development,
regressions, the triumph of evil. The individual, engaged with external
forces however conceived, sometimes wins, at other times loses; his
victory itself is precarious, and the enemy is always victorious,
inflicting losses upon him and making his victories precarious.
Individuals are ants crushed by a piece of rock, and if some ant
escapes from the mass that falls upon it and reproduces the species,
which begins again the labour from the beginning, the rock will fall,
or always may fall, upon the new generation and may crush all of its
members, so that it is the arbiter of the lives of the industrious
ants, to which it does much injury and no good. This is as pessimistic
a view as can be conceived.

These difficulties and vain-tentatives of pragmatic historiography have
caused it to be looked upon with disfavour and to be rejected in favour
of a superior conception, which preserves the initial humanistic motive
and, removing from it the abstractness of the atomicized individual,
assures it against any falling back into agnosticism, transcendency,
or the despair caused by pessimism. The conception that has completed
the criticism of pragmatic and the redemption of humanism has been
variously and more or less well formulated in the course of the
history of thought as mind or reason that constructs history, as the
'providence' of mind or the 'astuteness' of reason.

The great value of this conception is that it changes humanism from
abstract to concrete, from monadistic or atomistic to idealistic,
from something barely human into something cosmic, from unhuman
humanism, such as that of man shut up in himself and opposed to man,
into humanism that is really human, the humanity common to men,
indeed to the whole universe, which is all humanity, even in its most
hidden recesses--that is to say, spirituality. And history, according
to this conception, as it is no longer the work of nature or of an
extra-mundane God, so it is not the impotent work of the empirical
and unreal individual, interrupted at every moment, but the work
of that individual which is truly real and is the eternal spirit
individualizing itself. For this reason it has no adversary at all
opposed to it, but every adversary is at the same time its subject
--that is to say, is one of the aspects of that dialecticism which
constitutes its inner being. Again, it does not seek its principle of
explanation in a particular act of thought or will, or in a single
individual or in a multitude of individuals, or in an event given as
the cause of other events, or in a collection of events that form the
cause of a single event, but seeks and places it in the process itself,
which is born of thought and returns to thought, and is intelligible
through the auto-intelligibility of thought, which never has need of
appealing to anything external to itself in order to understand itself.
The explanation of history becomes so truly, because it coincides with
its explication; whereas explanation by means of abstract causes is a
breaking up of the process; the living having been slain, there is a
forced attempt made to obtain life by setting the severed head again
upon the shoulders.

When the historians of our day, and the many sensible folk who do not
make a profession of philosophy, repeat that the history of the world
does not depend upon the will of individuals, upon such accidents as
the length of Cleopatra's nose, or upon anecdotes; that no historical
event has ever been the result of deception or misunderstanding, but
that all have been due to persuasion and necessity; that there is some
one who has more intelligence than any individual whatever--the world;
that the explanation of a fact is always to be sought in the entire
organism and not in a single part torn from the other parts; that
history could not have been developed otherwise than it has developed,
and that it obeys its own iron logic; that every fact has its reason
and that no individual is completely wrong; and numberless propositions
of the same sort, which I have assembled promiscuously--they are
perhaps not aware that with such henceforth obvious statements they
are repeating the criticism of pragmatic history (and implicitly that
of theological and naturalistic history) and affirming the truth of
idealistic history. Were they aware of this, they would not mingle
with these propositions others which are their direct contradiction,
relating to causes, accidents, decadences, climates, races, and so
on, which represent the detritus of the conception that has been
superseded. For the rest, it is characteristic of the consciousness
called common or vulgar to drag along with it an abundant detritus of
old, dead concepts mingled with the new ones; but this does not detract
from the importance of its enforced recognition of the new concept,
which it substantially follows in its judgments.

Owing to the already mentioned resolution of all historiographical
questions into general philosophy, it would not be possible to
give copious illustrations of the new concept of history which the
nineteenth century has accepted in place of the pragmatic conception
without giving a lengthy exposition of general philosophy, which, in
addition to the particular inconvenience its presence would have here,
would lead to the repetition of things elsewhere explained. Taking the
position that history is the work, not of the abstract individual, but
of reason or providence, as admitted, I intend rather to correct an
erroneous mode of expressing that doctrine which I believe that I have
detected. I mean the form given to it by Vico and by Hegel, according
to which Providence or Reason makes use of the particular ends and
passions of men, in order to conduct them unconsciously to more lofty
spiritual conditions, making use for this purpose of benevolent cunning.

Were this form exact, or were it necessary to take it literally (and
not simply as an imaginative and provisional expression of the truth),
I greatly fear that a shadow of dualism and transcendency would appear
in the heart of the idealistic conception. For in this position of
theirs toward the Idea or Providence, individuals would have to be
considered, if not as _deluded_ (satisfied indeed beyond their desires
and hopes), then certainly as _illuded_, even though benevolently
illuded. Individuals and Providence, or individuals and Reason, would
not make one, but two; and the individual would be inferior and the
Idea superior--that is to say, dualism and the reciprocal transcendency
of God and the world would persist. This, on the other hand, would not
be at variance from the historical point of view with what has been
several times observed as to the theological residue at the bottom
of Hegel's, and yet more of Vico's, thought. Now the claim of the
idealistic conception is that individual and Idea make one and not
two--that is to say, perfectly coincide and are identified. For this
reason, there must be no talking (save metaphorically) of the wisdom of
the Idea and of the folly or illusion of individuals.

Nevertheless it seems indubitably certain that the individual acts
through the medium of infinite illusions, proposing to himself ends
that he fails to attain and attaining ends that he has not seen.
Schopenhauer (imitating Hegel) has made popular the illusions of
love, by means of which the will leads the individual to propagate
the species; and we all know that illusions are not limited to those
that men and women exercise toward one another (_les tromperies
réciproques_), but that they enter into our every act, which is always
accompanied by hopes and mirages that are not followed by realization.
And the illusion of illusions seems to be this: that the individual
believes himself to be toiling to live and to intensify his life more
and more, whereas he is really toiling to die. He wishes to see his
work completed as the affirmation of his life, and its completion is
the passing away of the work; he toils to obtain peace in life, but
peace is on the contrary death, which alone is peace. How then are we
to deny this dualism between the illusion of the individual and the
reality of the work, between the individual and the Idea? How are we to
refute the only explanation which seems to compose in some measure the
discord--namely, that the Idea turns the illusions of the individual to
its own ends, even though this doctrine lead inevitably to a sort of
transcendency of the Idea?

But the real truth is that what results from the observations and
objections above exposed is not the illusion of the individual who
loves, who tries to complete his work, who sighs for peace, but rather
the illusion of him who believes that the individual is illuded: the
illusory is the illusion itself. And this illusion appears in the
phenomenology of the spirit as the result of the well-known abstractive
process, which breaks up unity in an arbitrary manner and in this case
separates the result from the process or actual acting, in which alone
the former is real; the accompaniment from the accompanied, which is
all one with the accompaniment, because there is not spirit and its
escort, but only the one spirit in its development, the single moments
of the process, of the continuity, which is their soul; and so on.
That illusion arises in the individual when he begins to reflect upon
himself, and at the beginning of that reflection, which is at the same
time a dialectical process. But in concrete reflection, or rather in
concrete consciousness, he discovers that there is no end that has not
been realized, as well as it could, in the process, in which it was
never an absolute end--that is to say, an abstract end, but both a
means and an end.

To return to the popular theory of Schopenhauer, only he who looks
upon men as animals, or worse than animals, can believe that love is a
process that leads only to the biological propagation of the species,
when every man knows that he fecundates his own soul above all prior
to the marriage couch, and that images and thoughts and projects and
actions are created before children and in addition to them. Certainly,
we are conscious of the moments of an action as it develops--that is
to say, of its passage and not of its totality seen in the light of
a new spiritual situation, such as we strive to obtain when, as we
say, we leave the tumult behind us and set ourselves to write our own
history. But there is no illusion, either now or then; neither now nor
then is there the abstract individual face to face with a Providence
who succeeds in deceiving him for beneficial ends, acting rather as
a doctor than as a serious educator, and treating the race of men as
though they were animals to train and make use of, instead of men to
educate--that is to say, develop.

After having concentrated the mind upon a thought of Vico and of
Hegel, can it be possible to set ourselves down to examine those of
others which afford material to the controversies of historians and
methodologists of history of our time? These represent the usual form
in which appear the problems concerning the relation between the
individual and the Idea, between pragmatic and idealistic history.
Perhaps the patience necessary for the descent into low haunts is
meritorious and our duty; perhaps there may be some useful conclusion
to be drawn from these common disputes; but I must beg to be excused
for not taking part in them and for limiting myself to the sole remark
that the question which has been for some time discussed, whether
history be the history of 'masses' or of 'individuals,' would be
laughable in its very enunciation, if we were to understand by 'mass'
what the word implies, a complex of individuals. And since it is not
a good method to attribute laughable ideas to adversaries, it may be
supposed that on this occasion what is meant by 'mass' is something
else, which moves the mass of individuals. In this case, anyone can see
that the problem is the same as that which has just been examined. The
conflict between 'collectivistic' and 'individualistic' historiography
will never be composed so long as the former assigns to collectivity
the power that is creative of ideas and institutions, and the latter
assigns it to the individual of genius, for both affirmations are true
in what they include and false in what they exclude--that is to say,
not only in their exclusion of the opposed thesis, but also in the
tacit exclusion, which they both make, of totality as idea.

A warning as to a historiographical method, so similar in appearance
to that which I have been defending as to be confounded with it, may
perhaps be more opportune. This method, which is variously called
_sociological, institutional,_ and _of values,_ preserves among the
variety of its content and the inequality of mental level noticeable
in its supporters the general and constant characteristic of believing
that true history consists of the history of societies, institutions,
and human values, not of individual values. The history of individuals,
according to this view, is excluded, as being a parallel or inferior
history, and its inferiority is held to be due either to the slight
degree of interest that it is capable of arousing or to its lack of
intelligibility. In the latter case (by an inversion on this occasion
of the attitude of contempt which was noted in pragmatic history) it
is handed over to chronicle or romance. But in such dualism as this,
and in the disagreement which persists owing to that dualism, lies the
profound difference between the empirical and naturalistic conceptions
of value, of institutions, and of societies, and the idealistic
conception. This conception does not contemplate the establishment of
an abstract history of the spirit, of the abstract universal, side by
side with or beyond abstract individualistic or pragmatic history,
but the understanding that individual and idea, taken separately, are
two equivalent abstractions, each equally unfitted for supplying
its subject to history, and that true history is the history of the
individual in so far as he is universal and of the universal in so
far as individual. It is not a question of abolishing Pericles to the
advantage of politics, or Plato to the advantage of philosophy, or
Sophocles to the advantage of tragedy; but to think and to represent
politics, philosophy, and tragedy as Pericles, Plato, and Sophocles,
and these as each one of the others in one of their particular
moments. Because if each one of these is the shadow of a dream outside
its relation with the spirit, so likewise is the spirit outside its
individualizations, and to attain to universality in the conception of
history is to render both equally secure with that security which they
mutually confer upon one another. Were the existence of Pericles, of
Sophocles, and of Plato indifferent, would not the existence of the
idea have for that very reason been pronounced indifferent? Let him who
cuts individuals out of history but pay close attention and he will
perceive that either he has not cut them out at all, as he imagined, or
he has cut out with them history itself.




VII


CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION


Since a fact is historical in so far as it is thought, and since
nothing exists outside thought, there can be no sense whatever in the
question, What are _historical facts_ and what are _non-historical
facts?_ A non-historical fact would be a fact that has not been thought
and would therefore be non-existent, and so far no one has yet met
with a non-existent fact. A historical thought links itself to and
follows another historical thought, and then another, and yet another;
and however far we navigate the great sea of being, we never leave the
well-defined sea of thought. But it remains to be explained how the
illusion is formed that there are two orders of facts, historical and
non-historical. The explanation is easy when we recollect what has been
said as to the chroniclizing of history which dies as history, leaving
behind it the mute traces of its life, and also as to the function of
erudition or philology, which preserves these traces for the ends of
culture, arranging scattered items of news, documents, and monuments
in an orderly manner. News, documents, and monuments are innumerable,
and to collect them all would not only be impossible, but contrary to
the ends themselves of culture, which, though aided in its work by the
moderate and even copious supply of such things, would be hindered and
suffocated by their exuberance, not to say infinity. We consequently
observe that the annotator of news transcribes some items and omits
the rest; the collector of papers arranges and ties up in a bundle a
certain number of them, tearing up or burning or sending to the dealer
in such things a very large quantity, which forms the majority; the
collector of antiques places some objects in glass cases, others in
temporary safe custody, others he resolutely destroys or allows to be
destroyed; if he does otherwise, he is not an intelligent collector,
but a maniacal amasser, well fitted to provide (as he has provided)
the comic type of the antiquarian for fiction and comedy. For this
reason, not only are papers jealously collected and preserved in
public archives, and lists made of them, but efforts are also made
to discard those that are useless. It is for this reason that in the
recensions of philologists we always hear the same song in praise of
the learned man who has made a 'sober' use of documents, of blame for
him who has followed a different method and included what is vain and
superfluous in his volumes of annals, of selections from archives,
or of collections of documents. All learned men and philologists, in
fact, select, and all are advised to select. And what is the logical
criterion of this selection? There is none: no logical criterion can
be named that shall determine what news or what documents are or are
not useful and important, just because we are here occupied with a
practical and not with a scientific problem. Indeed, this lack of a
logical criterion is the foundation of the sophism that tyrannizes
over maniacal collectors, who reasonably affirm that everything can
be of use, and would therefore unreasonably preserve everything--they
wear themselves out in accumulating old clothes and odds and ends
of all sorts, over which they mount guard with jealous affection.
The criterion is the choice itself, conditioned, like every economic
act, by knowledge of the actual situation, and in this case by the
practical and scientific needs of a definite moment or epoch. This
selection is certainly conducted with intelligence, but not with the
application of a philosophic criterion, and is justified only in and
by itself. For this reason we speak of the fine tact, or scent, or
instinct of the collector or learned man. Such a process of selection
may quite well make use of apparent logical distinctions, as those
between public and private facts, capital and secondary documents,
beautiful or ugly, significant or insignificant monuments; but in
final analysis the decision is always given from practical motives,
and is summed up in the act of preserving or neglecting. Now from this
preserving or neglecting, in which our action is realized, is afterward
invented an _objective_ quality, attributed to facts, which leads to
their being spoken of as 'facts that are worthy' and 'facts that are
not worthy of history,' of 'historical' and 'non-historical' facts. But
all this is an affair of imagination, of vocabulary, and of rhetoric,
which in no way changes the substance of things.

When history is confounded with erudition and the methods of the
one are unduly transferred to the other, and when the metaphorical
distinction that has just been noted is taken in a literal sense, we
are asked how it is possible to avoid going astray in the infinity of
facts, and with what criterion it is possible to effect the separation
of 'historical' facts from 'those that are not worthy of history.'
But there is no fear of going astray in history, because, as we have
seen, the problem is in every case prepared by life, and in every case
the problem is solved by thought, which passes from the confusion of
life to the distinctness of consciousness; a given problem with a
given solution: a problem that generates other problems, but is never
a problem of choice between two or more facts, but on each occasion
a creation of the unique fact, the fact thought. Choice does not
appear in it, any more than in art, which passes from the obscurity
of sentiment to the clearness of the representation, and is never
embarrassed between the images to be chosen, because itself creates the
image, the unity of the image.

By thus confounding two things, not only is an insoluble problem
created, but the very distinction between facts that can and facts
that cannot be neglected is also denaturalized and rendered void.
This distinction is quite valid as regards erudition, for facts that
can be neglected are always facts--that is to say, they are traces of
facts, in the form of news, documents, and monuments, and for this
reason one can understand how they can be looked upon as a class to
be placed side by side with the other class of facts that cannot be
neglected. But non-historical facts--that is to say, facts that have
not been thought--would be nothing, and when placed beside historical
facts--that is to say, thought as a species of the same genus--they
would communicate their nullity to those also, and would dissolve their
own distinctness, together with the concept of history.

After this, it does not seem necessary to examine the characteristics
that have been proposed as the basis for this division of facts into
historical and non-historical. The assumption being false, the manner
in which it is treated in its particulars remains indifferent and
without importance in respect to the fundamental criticism of the
division itself. It may happen (and this is usually the case) that
the characteristics and the differences enunciated have some truth in
themselves, or at least offer some problem for solution: for example,
when by historical facts are meant general facts and by non-historical
facts those that are individual. Here we find the problem of the
relation of the individual and the universal. Or, again, by historical
facts are sometimes meant those that treat of history proper, and by
non-historical the stray references of chronicles, and here we find the
problem as to the relation between history and chronicle. But regarded
as an attempt to decide logically of what facts history should treat
and what neglect, and to assign to each its quality, such divisions are
all equally erroneous.

The _periodization_ of history is subject to the same criticism. To
_think_ history is certainly _to divide it into periods_, because
thought is organism, dialectic, drama, and as such has its periods, its
beginning, its middle, and its end, and all the other ideal pauses that
a drama implies and demands. But those pauses are ideal and therefore
inseparable from thought, with which they are one, as the shadow is one
with the body, silence with sound: they are identical and changeable
with it. Christian thinkers divided history into that which preceded
and that which followed the redemption, and this periodization was not
an addition to Christian thought, but Christian thought itself. We
modern Europeans divide it into antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern
times. This periodization has been subject to a great deal of refined
criticism on the part of those who hold that it came to be introduced
anyhow, almost dishonestly, without the authority of great names, and
without the advice of the philosophers and the methodologists being
asked on the matter. But it has maintained itself and will maintain
itself so long as our consciousness shall persist in its present phase.
The fact of its having been insensibly formed would appear to be
rather a merit than a demerit, because this means that it was not due
to the caprice of an individual, but has followed the development of
modern consciousness itself. When antiquity has nothing more to tell us
who still feel the need of studying Greek and Latin, Greek philosophy
and Roman law; when the Middle Ages have been superseded (and they have
not been superseded yet); when a new social form, different from that
which emerged from the ruins of the Middle Ages, has supplanted our
own; then the problem itself and the historical outlook which derives
from it will also be changed, and perhaps antiquity and the Middle Ages
and modern times will all be contained within a single epoch, and the
pauses be otherwise distributed. And what has been said of these great
periods is to be understood of all the others, which vary according to
the variety of historical material and the various modes of viewing it.
It has sometimes been said that every periodization has a 'relative'
value. But we must say 'both relative and absolute,' like all thought,
it being understood that the periodization is intrinsic to thought and
determined by the determination of thought.

However, the practical needs of chroniclism and of learning make
themselves felt here also. Just as in metrical treatises the internal
rhythm of a poem is resolved into external rhythm and divided into
syllables and feet, into long and short vowels, tonic and rhythmic
accents, into strophes and series of strophes, and so on, so the
internal time of historical thought (that time which is thought
itself) is derived from chroniclism converted into external time, or
temporal series, of which the elements are spatially separated from one
another. Scheme and facts are no longer one, but two, and the facts
are disposed according to the scheme, and divided according to the
scheme into major and minor cycles (for example, according to hours,
days, months, years, centuries, and millenniums, where the calculation
is based upon the rotations and revolutions of the earth upon itself
and round the sun). Such is _chronology_, by means of which we know
that the histories of Sparta, Athens, and Rome filled the thousand
years preceding Christ, that of the Lombards, the Visigoths, and the
Franks the first millennium after Christ, and that we are still in the
second millennium. This mode of chronology can be pursued by means of
particularizing incidents thus: that the Empire of the West ended in
A.D. 476 (although it did not really end then or had already ended
previously); that Charlemagne the Frank was crowned Emperor at Rome
by Pope Leo III in the year 800; that America was discovered in 1492,
and that the Thirty Years War ended in 1648. It is of the greatest
use to us to know these things, or (since we really _know_ nothing
in this way) to acquire the capacity of so checking references to
facts that we are able to find them easily and promptly when occasion
arises. Certainly no one thinks of speaking ill of chronologies and
chronographies and tables and synoptic views of history, although in
using them we run the risk (and in what thing done by man does he not
run a risk?) of seeing worthy folk impressed with the belief that the
number produces the event, as the hand of the clock, when it touches
the sign of the hour, makes the clock strike; or (as an old professor
of mine used to say) that the curtain fell upon the acting of ancient
history in 476, to rise again immediately afterward on the beginning of
the Middle Ages.

But such fancies are not limited to the minds of the ingenuous and
inattentive; they constitute the base of that error owing to which a
distinction of periods, which shall be what is called _objective and
natural_, is desired and sought after. Christian chronographers had
already introduced this ontological meaning into chronology, making
the millenniums of the world's history correspond with the days of
the creation or the ages of man's life. Finally, Ferrari in Italy and
Lorenz in Germany (the latter ignorant of his Italian predecessor)
conceived a theory of historical periods according to generations,
calculated in periods of thirty-one years and a fraction, or of
thirty-three years and a fraction, and grouped as tetrads or triads, in
periods of a hundred and twenty-five years or a century. But, without
dwelling upon numerical and chronographic schemes, all doctrines that
represent the history of nations as proceeding according to the stages
of development of the individual, of his psychological development,
of the categories of the spirit, or of anything else, are due to
the same error, which is that of rendering periodization external
and natural. All are mythological, if taken in the naturalistic
sense, save when these designations are employed empirically--that
is to say, when chronology is used in chroniclism and erudition in a
legitimate manner. We must also repeat a warning as to the care to be
employed in recognizing important problems, which sometimes have first
appeared through the medium of those erroneous inquiries, and as to
the truths that have been seen or caught a glimpse of by these means.
This exempts us (as we remarked above in relation to the criteria of
choice) from examining those doctrines in the particularity of their
various determinations, because in this respect, if their assumption be
obviously fantastic, their value is consequently _nil_. _Nil_, as the
value of all those æsthetic constructions is _nil_ which claim to pass
from the abstractions, by means of which they reduce the organism of
the work of art to fragments for practical ends, to the explanation of
the nature of art and to the judgment and history of the creations of
human imagination.




VIII


DISTINCTION (SPECIAL HISTORIES) AND DIVISION


The conception of history that we have reached--namely, that which has
not its documents outside itself, but in itself, which has not its
final and causal explanation outside itself, but within itself, which
has not philosophy outside itself, but coincides with philosophy, which
has not the reason for its definite form and rhythm outside itself, but
within itself--identifies history with the act of thought itself, which
is always philosophy and history together. And with this it debarrasses
it of the props and plasters applied to it as though to an invalid in
need of external assistance. For they really did produce an infirmity
through their very insistence in first imagining and then treating a
non-existent infirmity.

Doubtless the autonomy thus attained is a great advantage; but at first
sight it is not free from a grave objection. When all the fallacious
distinctions formerly believed in have been cancelled, it seems that
nothing remains for history as an act of thought but the immediate
consciousness of the individual-universal, in which all distinctions
are submerged and lost. And this is mysticism, which is admirably
adapted for feeling oneself at unity with God, but is not adapted for
thinking the world nor for acting in the world.

Nor does it seem useful to add that unity with God does not exclude
consciousness of diversity, of change, of becoming. For it can
be objected that consciousness of diversity either derives from
the individual and intuitive element, and in this case it is
incomprehensible how such an element can subsist in its proper form of
intuition, in thought, which always universalizes; or if it is said
to be the result of the act of thought itself, then the distinction,
believed to have been abolished, reappears in a strengthened form,
and the asserted indistinct simplicity of thought remains shaken. A
mysticism which should insist upon particularity and diversity, a
_historical mysticism,_ in fact, would be a contradiction in terms, for
mysticism is unhistorical and anti-historical by its very nature.

But these objections retain their validity precisely when the act of
thought is conceived in the mystical manner--that is to say, not as
an act of thought, but as something negative, the simple result of
the negation by reason of empirical distinctions, which certainly
leaves thought free of illusions, but not yet truly full of itself.
To sum up, mysticism, which is a violent reaction from naturalism and
transcendency, yet retains traces of what it has denied, because it
is incapable of substituting anything for it, and thus maintains its
presence, in however negative a manner. But the really efficacious
negation of empiricism and transcendency, their positive negation, is
brought about not by means of mysticism, but of _idealism_; not in
the immediate, but in the _mediated_ consciousness; not in indistinct
unity, but in the unity that is _distinction_, and as such truly
thought.

The act of thought is the consciousness of the spirit that is
consciousness; and therefore that act is auto-consciousness. And
auto-consciousness implies distinction in unity, distinction between
subject and object, theory and practice, thought and will, universal
and particular, imagination and intellect, utility and morality, or
however these distinctions of and in unity are formulated, and whatever
may be the historical forms and denominations which the eternal system
of distinctions, _perennis philosophia,_ may assume. To think is to
judge, and to judge is to distinguish while unifying, in which the
distinguishing is not less real than the unifying, and the unifying
than the distinguishing--that is to say, they are real, not as two
diverse realities, but as one reality, which is dialectical unity
(whether it be called unity or distinction).

The first consequence to be drawn from this conception of the spirit
and of thought is that when empirical distinctions have been overthrown
history does not fall into the indistinct; when the will-o'-the-wisps
have been extinguished, darkness does not supervene, because the light
of the distinction is to be found in history itself. History is thought
by judging it, with that judgment which is not, as we have shown,
the evaluation of sentiments, but the intrinsic knowledge of facts.
And here its unity with philosophy is all the more evident, because
the better philosophy penetrates and refines its distinctions, the
better it penetrates the particular; and the closer its embrace of the
particular, the closer its possession of its own proper conceptions.
Philosophy and historiography progress together, indissolubly united.

Another consequence to be deduced from the above, and one which
will perhaps seem to be more clearly connected with the practice of
historiography, is the refutation of the false idea of a _general
history,_ superior to _special histories._ This has been called a
history of histories, and is supposed to be true and proper history,
having beneath it political, economic, and institutional histories,
moral history or the history of the sentiments and ethical ideals, the
history of poetry and art, the history of thought and of philosophy.
But were this so, a dualism would arise, with the usual result of every
dualism, that each one of the two terms, having been ill distinguished,
reveals itself as empty. In this case, either general history shows
itself to be empty, having nothing to do when the special histories
have accomplished their work, or particular histories do so, when
they fail even to pick up the crumbs of the banquet, all of which has
been voraciously devoured by the other. Sometimes recourse is had to
a feeble expedient, and to general history is accorded the treatment
of one of the subjects of the special histories, the latter being
then grouped apart from that. Of this arrangement the best that can
be said is that it is purely verbal and does not designate a logical
distinction and opposition, and the worst that can happen is that a
real value should be attributed to it, because in this case a fantastic
hierarchy is established, which makes it impossible to understand the
genuine development of the facts. And there is practically no special
history that has not been promoted to be a general history, now as
_political_ or _social_ history, to which those of literature, art,
philosophy, religion, and the lesser sides of life should supply an
appendix; now as _history of the ideas or progress of the mind,_ where
social history and all the others are placed in the second line; now as
_economic history,_ where all the others are looked upon as histories
or chronicles of 'superstructures' derived from economic development in
an illusory manner, while the former is held to have developed in some
mysterious way by means of unknown powers, without thought and will,
or producing thought and will, in fancies and velleities, like so many
bubbles on the surface of its course. We must be firm in maintaining
against the theory of _general_ history that there _does not exist
anything real but special histories,_ because thought thinks facts to
the extent that it discerns a special aspect of them, and only and
always constructs histories of ideas, of imaginations, of political
actions, of apostolates, and the like.

But it is equally just and advantageous to maintain the opposite
thesis: that _nothing exists but general history._ In this way is
refuted the false notion of the speciality of histories, understood as
a juxtaposition of specialities. This fallacy is correctly noted by the
critics in all histories which expose the various orders of facts one
after the other as so many strata and (to employ the critics' word)
compartments or little boxes, containing political history, industrial
and commercial history, history of customs, religious history, history
of literature and of art, and so on, under so many separate headings.
These divisions are merely literary, they may possess some utility as
such, but in the case under consideration they do not fulfil merely
a literary function, but attempt that of historical understanding,
and thereby give evidence of their defect, in thus presenting these
histories as without relation between one another, not dialecticized,
but aggregated. It is quite clear that _history_ remains to be
written after the writing of those _histories_ in this disjointed
manner. Abstract distinction and abstract unity are both equally
misunderstandings of concrete distinction and concrete unity, which is
relation.

And when the relation is not broken and history is thought in the
concrete, it is seen that to think one aspect is to think all the
others at the same time. Thus it is impossible to understand completely
the doctrine, say, of a philosopher, without having to some extent
recourse to the personality of the man himself, and, by distinguishing
the philosopher from the man, at the same time qualifying not only the
philosopher but the man, and uniting these two distinct characteristics
as a relation of life and philosophy. The same is to be said of the
distinction between the philosopher as philosopher and as orator
or artist, as subject to his private passions or as rising to the
execution of his duty, and so on. This means that we cannot think the
history of philosophy save as at the same time social, political,
literary, religious, and ethical history, and so on. This is the source
of the illusion that one in particular of these histories is the
whole of them, or that that one from which a start is made, and which
answers to the predilections and to the competence of the writer, is
the foundation of all the others. It also explains why it is sometimes
said that the 'history of philosophy' is also the 'philosophy of
history,' or that 'social history' is the true 'history of philosophy,'
and so on. A history of philosophy thoroughly thought out is truly the
whole of history (and in like manner a history of literature or of any
other form of the spirit), not because it annuls the other in itself,
but because all the others are present in it. Hence the demand that
historians shall acquire universal minds and a doctrine that shall
also be in a way universal, and the hatred of specialist historians,
pure philosophers, pure men of letters, pure politicians, or pure
economists, who, owing precisely to their one-sidedness, fail even to
understand the speciality that they claim to know in its purity, but
possess only in skeleton form that is to say, in its abstractness.

And here a distinction becomes clear to us, with which it is impossible
to dispense in thinking history: the distinction between _form_ and
_matter_, owing to which, for example, we understand art by referring
it to matter (emotions, sentiments, passions, etc.) to which the artist
has given form; or philosophy by referring it to the facts which
gave rise to the problems that the thinker formulated and solved, or
the action of the politician by referring it to the aspirations and
ideas with which he was faced, and which supplied the material he has
shaped with genius, as an artist of practical life--that is to say, we
understand these things by always distinguishing an _external_ from
an _internal_ history, or an external history that is made into an
internal history. This distinction of matter and form, of external and
internal, would give rise again to the worst sort of dualism, would
lead us to think of the pragmatical imagination of man who strives
against his enemy nature, if it did not assume an altogether internal
and dialectical meaning in its true conception. Because from what has
been said it is easy to see that external and internal are not two
realities or two forms of reality, but that external and internal,
matter and form, both appear in turn as form in respect to one another,
and this materialization of each to idealize itself in the other
is the perpetual movement of the spirit as relation and circle: a
circle that is progress just because neither of these forms has the
privilege of functioning solely as form, and neither has the misfortune
of functioning solely as matter. What is the matter of artistic and
philosophical history? What is called social and moral history? And
what is the matter of this history? Artistic and philosophical history.
From this clearing up of the relation between matter and form, that
false mode of history is refuted which sets facts on one side and ideas
on the other, as two rival elements, and is therefore never able to
pay its debt and show how ideas are generated from facts and facts
from ideas, because that generation must be conceived in its truth as a
perpetually rendering vain of one of the elements in the unity of the
other.

If history is based upon distinction (unity) and coincides with
philosophy, the high importance that research into the autonomy of one
or the other special history attains in historiographical development
is perfectly comprehensible, but this is merely the reflection of
philosophical research, and is often troubled and lacking in precision.
All know what a powerful stimulus the new conception of imagination
and art gave to the conception of history, and therefore also to
mythology and religion, which were being developed with slowness and
difficulty during the eighteenth to triumph at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. This is set down to the creation of the history
of poetry and myth in the works of Vico in the first place and then
of Herder and others, and of the history of the figurative arts in
the works of Winckelmann and others. And to the clearer conception of
philosophy, law, customs, and language is due their renewal in the
respective historiographical fields, at the hands of Hegel, Savigny,
and Humboldt, and other creators and improvers of history, celebrated
on this account. This also explains why there has been so much dispute
as to whether history should be described as history of the state or as
history of culture, and as to whether the history of culture represents
an original aspect beyond that of the state or greater than it, as to
whether the progress narrated in history is only intellectual or also
practical and moral, and so on. These discussions must be referred to
the fundamental philosophical inquiry into the forms of the spirit,
their distinction and relation, and to the precise mode of relation of
each one to the other.[1]

But although history distinguishes and unifies, it never
_divides_--that is to say, _separates_; and the _divisions of history_
which have been and are made do not originate otherwise than as the
result of the same practical and abstractive process that we have
seen break up the actuality of living history to collect and arrange
the inert materials in the temporal scheme, rendered extrinsic.
Histories already produced, and as such past, receive in this way
titles (every thought is 'without title' in its actuality--that is to
say, it has only itself for title), and each one is separated from
the other, and all of them, thus separated, are classified under more
or less general empirical conceptions, by means of classifications
that more or less cross one another. We may admire copious lists of
this sort in the books of methodologists, all of them proceeding,
as is inevitable, according to one or the other of these general
criteria: the criterion of the _quality_ of the objects (histories
of religions, customs, ideas, institutions, etc., etc.), and that of
_temporal-spatial_ arrangement (European, Asiatic, American, ancient,
medieval, of modern times, of ancient Greece, of ancient Rome, of
modern Greece, of the Rome of the Middle Ages, etc.); in conformity
with the abstract procedure which, when dividing the concept, is led
to posit on the one hand _abstract forms of the spirit_ (objects) and
on the other _abstract intuitions_ (space and time). I shall not say
that those titles and divisions are useless, nor even those tables,
but shall limit myself to the' remark that the history of philosophy,
of art, or of any other ideally distinct history, when understood as a
definite book or discourse, becomes empirical for the reason already
given, that true distinction is ideal, and a discourse or a book in
its concreteness contains not only distinction but unity and totality,
and to look upon either as incorporating only one side of the real is
arbitrary. And I shall also observe that as there are histories of
philosophy and of art in the empirical sense, so also nothing forbids
our talking in the same sense of a general history, separate from
special histories, indeed even of a history of progress and one of
decadence, of good and evil, of truth and error.

The confusion between division and distinction--that is to say, between
the empirical consideration that breaks up history into special
histories and the philosophical consideration which always unifies
and distinguishes as it unifies--is the cause of errors analogous to
those that we have seen to result from such a process. To this are due
above all the many disquisitions on the 'problem' and on the 'limits'
of this or that history or group of special histories empirically
constituted. The problem does not exist, and the limits are impossible
to assign because they are conventional, as is finally recognized with
much trouble, and as could be recognized with much less trouble if a
start were made, not from the periphery, but from the centre--that is
to say, from gnoseological analysis. A graver error is the creation of
an infinity of _entia imaginationis_, taken for metaphysical entities
and forms of the spirit, and the pretension that arises from this of
developing the history of abstractions as though they were so many
forms of the spirit with independent lives of their own, whereas the
spirit is one. Hence the innumerable otiose problems with fantastic
solutions met with in historical books, which it is here unnecessary
to record. Every one is now able to draw these obvious consequences
for himself and to make appropriate reflections concerning them. It
is further obvious that the _entia imaginations,_ in the same way as
the 'choice' of facts, and the chronological schematization or dating
of them, enter as a subsidiary element into any concrete exposition of
historical thought, because the distinction of thinking and abstraction
is an ideal distinction, which operates only in the unity of the spirit.


[1] See Appendix II.




IX


THE 'HISTORY OF NATURE' AND HISTORY


We must cease the process of classifying referred to just now, and
also that of the illusion of naturalism connected with it, by means
of which imaginary entities created by abstraction are changed into
historical facts and classificatory schemes into history, if we wish
to understand the difference between history that is history and that
due to what are called the natural sciences. This is also called
history--_'history of nature'_--but is so only in name. Some few years
ago a lively protest was made[1] against the confusion of these two
forms of mental labour, one of which offers us genuine history, such as
might, for instance, be that of the Peloponnesian War or of Hannibal's
wars or of ancient Egyptian civilization, and the other a spurious
history, such as that known as the history of animal organisms, of the
earth's structure or geology, of the formation of the solar system
or cosmogony. It was observed with reason that in many treatises
the one has been wrongly connected with the other--that is to say,
history of civilization with history of nature, as though the former
follows the latter historically. The bottomless abyss between the two
was pointed out. This has been observed, however, in a confused way
by all, and better by historians of purely historical temperament,
who have an instinctive repugnance for natural history and hold
themselves carefully aloof from it. It was remembered with reason that
the history of historians has always the individually determinate as
its object, and proceeds by internal reconstruction, whereas that of
the naturalists depends upon types and abstractions and proceeds by
analogies. Finally, this so-called history or _quasi-history_ was very
accurately defined as an apparently chronological arrangement of things
spatially distinct, and it was proposed to describe it with a new and
proper name, that of _Metastoria._

Indeed, constructions of this sort are really nothing but
classificatory schemes, from the more simple to the more complex.
Their terms are obtained by abstract analyses and generalization, and
their series appears to the imagination as a history of the successive
development of the more complex from the more simple. Their right to
exist as classificatory schemes is incontestable, and their utility is
also incontestable, for they avail themselves of imagination to assist
learning and to aid the memory.

This only becomes contestable when they are estranged from themselves,
lose their real nature, lay claim to illegitimate functions, and
take their imaginary historicity too seriously. We find this in the
metaphysic of naturalism, especially in _evolutionism,_ which has
been its most recent form. This is due, not so much to the men of
science (who are as a rule cautious and possess a more or less clear
consciousness of the limits of those schemes and series) as to the
dilettante scientists and dilettante philosophers to whom we owe the
many books that undertake to narrate the origin of the world, and
which, aided by the acrisia of their authors, run on without meeting
any obstacle, from the cell, indeed from the nebula, to the French
Revolution, and even to the socialist movements of the nineteenth
century. 'Universal histories,' and therefore cosmological romances
(as we have already remarked in relation to universal histories), are
composed, not of pure thought, which is criticism, but of thought
mingled with imagination, which finds its outlet in myths. It is
useless to prove in detail that the evolutionists of to-day are
creators of myths, and that they weary themselves with attempts to
write the first chapters of Genesis in modern style (their description
is more elaborate, but they confuse such description with history in
a manner by no means inferior to that of Babylonian or Israelitish
priests), because this becomes evident as soon as such works are placed
in their proper position. Their logical origin will at once make clear
their true character.

But setting aside these scientific monstrosities, already condemned
by the constant attitude of restraint and scepsis toward them on the
part of all scientifically trained minds--condemned, too, by the
very fact that they have had to seek and have found their fortune
at the hands of the crowd or 'great public,' and have fallen to the
rank of popular propaganda--we must here determine more precisely
how these classificatory schemes of historiographical appearance are
formed and how they operate. With this object, it is well to observe
that classificatory schemes and apparent histories do not appear to
be confined to the field of what are called the natural sciences or
sub-human world, but appear also in that of the moral sciences or
sciences of the human world. And to adduce simple and perspicuous
examples, it often happens that in the abstract analysis of language
and the positing of the types of the parts of speech, noun, verb,
adjective, pronoun, and so on, or in the analysis of the word into
syllables and sounds, or of style into proper or metaphorical words
and into various classes of metaphors, we construct classes that go
from the more simple to the more complex. This gives rise to the
illusion of history of language, exposed as the successive acquisition
of the various parts of speech or as the passage from the single
sound to the syllable (monosyllabic languages), from the syllable to
the aggregate of syllables (plurisyllabic languages), from words to
propositions, metres, rhymes, and so on. These are imaginary histories
that have never been developed elsewhere than in the studies of
scientists. In like manner, literary styles that have been abstractly
distinguished and arranged in series of increasing complexity (for
example, lyric, epic, drama) have given rise and continue to give
rise to the thought of a schematic arrangement of poetry, which, for
example, should appear during a first period as lyric, a second as
epic, a third as drama.

The same has happened with regard to the classifications of abstract
political, economic, philosophical forms, and so on, all of which have
been followed by their shadows in the shape of imaginative history. The
repugnance that historians experience in attaching their narratives
to naturalistic-mythological prologues--that is to say, in linking
together in matrimony a living being and a corpse--is also proved by
their reluctance to admit scraps of abstract history into concrete
history, for they at once reveal their heterogeneity in regard to one
another by their mere appearance. De Sanctis has often been reproached
for not having begun his _History of Italian Literature_ with an
account of the origins of the Italian language and of its relations
with Latin, and even with the linguistic family of Indo-European
languages, and of the races that inhabit the various parts of Italy.
An attempt has even been made to correct the design of that classic
work by supplying, with a complete lack of historical sense, the
introductions and additions that are not needed. But de Sanctis,
who took great pains to select the best point of departure for the
narrative of the history of Italian literature, and finally decided
to begin with a brief sketch of the state of culture at the Suabian
court and of the Sicilian poetical school, did not hesitate a moment
in rejecting all abstractions of languages and races which to his true
historical sense did not appear to be reconcilable with the _tenzone_
of Ciullo, with the rhythms of Friar Jacob, or with the ballades of
Guido Cavalcanti, which are quite concrete things.

We must also remember that plans for classification and
pseudo-historical arrangements of their analogies are created not only
upon the bodies of histories that are living and really reproducible
and rethinkable, but also upon those that are dead--that is to say,
upon news items, documents, and monuments. This observation makes
more complete the identification of imaginary histories arising from
the natural sciences with those which have their source in the moral
sciences. The foundation of both is therefore very often not historical
intelligence, but, on the contrary, the lack of it, and their end not
only that of aiding living history and keeping it alive, but also the
mediate end of assisting in the prompt handling of the remains and the
cinders of the vanished world, the inert residues of history.

The efficacy of this enlargement of the concept of abstract history,
which is analogical or naturalizing in respect to the field known
as 'spiritual' (and thus separated from that empirically known as
'natural'), cannot be doubted by one who knows and remembers the great
consequences that philosophy draws from the resolution of the realistic
concept of 'nature' in the idealistic conception of 'construction,'
which the human spirit makes of reality, looking upon it as nature.
Kant worked upon the solution of this problem indefatigably and with
subtlety; he gave to it the direction that it has followed down to
our own days. And the consequence that we draw from it, in respect
to the problem that now occupies us, is that an error was committed
when, moved by the legitimate desire of distinguishing abstract from
concrete history, naturalizing history from thinking history, genuine
from fictitious history, a sort of agnosticism was reached, as a final
result, by means of limiting history to the field of humanity, which
was said to be cognoscible, and declaring all the rest to be the object
of metastoria and the limit of human knowledge. This conclusion would
lead again to a sort of dualism, though in a lofty sphere. But if
metastoria also appears, as we have seen, in the human field, it is
clear that the distinction as formulated stands in need of correction;
and the agnosticism founded upon it vacillates and falls. There is not
a double object before thought, man and nature, the one capable of
treatment in one way, the other in another way, the first cognizable,
and the second uncognizable and capable only of being constructed
abstractly; but thought always thinks history, the history of reality
that is one, and beyond thought there is nothing, for the natural
object becomes a myth when it is affirmed as object, and shows itself
in its true reality as nothing else but the human spirit itself, which
schematized history that has been lived and thought, or the materials
of the history that has already been lived and thought. The saying that
nature has no history is to be understood in the sense that nature as
a rational being capable of thought has not history, because it is
not--or, let us say, it is nothing that is real. The opposite saying,
that nature is also formative and possesses historical life, is to be
taken in the other sense that reality, the sole reality (comprehending
man and nature in itself, which are only empirically and abstractly
separate), is all development and life.

What substantial difference can ever be discovered on the one hand
between geological stratifications and the remains of vegetables
and animals, of which it is possible to construct a prospective and
indeed a serial arrangement, but which it is never possible to rethink
in the living dialectic of their genesis, and on the other hand the
relics of what is called human history, and not only that called
prehistorical, but even the historical documents of our history of
yesterday, which we have forgotten and no longer understand, and which
we can certainly classify and arrange in a series, and build castles
in the air about or allow our fancies to wander among, but which it is
no longer possible really to think again? Both cases, which have been
arbitrarily distinguished, are reducible to one single case. Even in
what is called 'human history' there exists a 'natural history,' and
what is called 'natural history' also was once 'human' history--that
is to say, spiritual, although to us who have left it so far behind
it seems to be almost foreign, so mummified and mechanicized has it
become, if we glance at it but summarily and from the outside. Do you
wish to understand the true history of a Ligurian or Sicilian neolithic
man? First of all, try if it be possible to make yourself mentally
into a Ligurian or Sicilian neolithic man; and if it be not possible,
or you do not care to do this, content yourself with describing and
classifying and arranging in a series the skulls, the utensils, and
the inscriptions belonging to those neolithic peoples. Do you wish to
understand the history of a blade of grass? First and foremost, try
to make yourself into a blade of grass, and if you do not succeed,
content yourself with analysing the parts and even with disposing them
in a kind of imaginative history. This leads to the idea from which
I started in making these observations about historiography, as to
history being _contemporary_ history and chronicle being past history.
We take advantage of the idea and at the same time confirm that truth
by solving with its aid the antithesis between a history that is
'history' and a 'history of nature,' which, although it is history,
was supposed to obey laws strangely at variance with those of the only
history. It solves this antithesis by placing the second in the lower
rank of _pseudo-history._


[1] By the economist Professor Gotti, at the seventh congress of
German historians, held at Heidelberg. The lecture can be read in
print under the anything but clear or exact title of _Die Grenzen der
Geschichte_ (Leipzig, Duncker u. Humblot, 1904).




APPENDIX I


ATTESTED EVIDENCE


If true history is that of which an interior verification is possible,
and is therefore history ideally contemporary and present, and if
history by witnesses is lacking in truth and is not even false, but
just neither false nor true (not a _hoc est_ but a _fertur_), a
legitimate question arises as to the origin and function of those
innumerable propositions resumed from evidence critically thrashed out
and 'held to be true,' although not verified, and perhaps never to be
verified, but nevertheless employed even in most serious historical
treatment. When we are writing the history of the doctrine known as
the _coincidentia oppositorum,_ or of the poem called _I sepolcri,_
the Latin of the Cardinal di Cusa and the verse of Foscolo obviously
belong to us, both as to the thoughts and the actual words, pronounced
by ourselves to ourselves, and the certainty of those historical facts
is at the same time logical truth. But that the _De docta ignorantia_
was written between the end of 1439 and the early part of 1440, and
Foscolo's poem on the return of the poet to Italy after his long
military service in France, is evidence founded upon proofs, as to
which we can only say that they are to be considered valid, because
they have been to some extent _attested,_ but we cannot claim them to
be true. No amount of acute mental labour upon them can prevent another
document or the better reading of an old document destroying them.
Nevertheless, no one will treat of the works of the Cusan or of Foscolo
without availing himself of the biographical details as to their
authors which have been preserved.

An esteemed methodologist of our day has been tempted to found the
faith placed in this order of evidence upon a sort of telepathy of
the past, an almost spiritualistic revival. But there is nothing
so mysterious in the genesis of that belief as to need a risky and
fantastic explanation, to which even Horace's Jew would not give
credence. On the contrary, it is a question of something that we can
observe in process of formation in our private life of every day. We
are noting down in our diary, for instance, certain of our acts, or
striking the balance of our account. After a certain interval has
elapsed those facts fade from memory and the only way of affirming to
ourselves that they have happened and must be considered true is the
evidence of our notes: the document bears witness; trust the book. We
behave in a similar way in respect to the statements of others on the
authority of their diaries or account-books. We presume that if the
thing has been written down it answers to the truth. Doubtless this
assumption, like every assumption, may turn out to be false in fact,
owing to the note having been made in a moment of distraction or of
hallucination, or too late, when the memory of the fact was already
imprecise and lacking in certainty, or because it was capriciously
made or made with the object of deceiving others. But just for this
reason, written evidence is not usually accepted with closed eyes;
its verisimilitude is examined and we confront it with other written
evidence, we investigate the probity and accuracy of the writer or
witness. It is just for this reason that the penal code threatens with
pains and penalties those who alter or falsify documents. And although
these and other subtle and severe precautions do not in certain cases
prevent fraud, deception, and error (in the same way that the tribunals
established for the purpose of condemning the guilty often send away
the guilty unpunished and sometimes condemn the innocent), yet the use
of documents and evidence works out on the whole in accordance with the
truth; it is held to be useful and worthy of support and encouragement,
because the injuries that it is liable to cause are greatly inferior to
those that it prevents.

Now what men do with regard to their private affairs in daily life may
be said to be done on a large scale by the human race when it delivers
itself of the load of innumerable facts and fixes them externally where
they are recoverable in a weakened form as unverifiable documentary
evidence, yet are nevertheless such that as a whole we are justified
in looking upon them end treating them as true. Historical faith
then is not the result of telepathy or spiritualism, but of a wise
economic provision, which the spirit continues to realize. In this
way we understand historical work directed toward the prevention of
alterations and deformations, and its acceptation of certain testimony,
as 'what must be held to be true in the present state of science,' and
its graduation of the rest as uncertain, probable, and most probable
to be sometimes accepted in the expectation of ulterior inquiries.
Finally, it explains the dislike of 'hypercriticism' when, not content
with a constant refinement of criticism, hypercriticism contests the
value of the most ingenuous and authoritative testimony. The reason is
that it thus breaks the rules of the game that is being played _sub
regula,_ and only serves at the most to remind those apt to forget it
that history by evidence is at bottom an altogether external history,
never fundamental, true history, which is contemporary and present.

This genesis or nature of 'attested' evidence already contains the
answer to the other question as to its function. It is clear that this
cannot be to posit true history or to take its place, but to supply it
with those secondary particulars which it would not be worth while to
make the effort of keeping alive and complete in the mind, for this
effort would result in damaging what is most important to us. Finally,
whether the De docta ignorantia were written some time earlier or
later is something that may quite well be determined by a different
interpretation of this or that thought of Cusanus, but it does not
affect the function that the doctrine of the coincidence of opposites
exercises in the formation of logical science. Again, whether the
Sepolcri was composed or planned prior to Foscolo's visit to France
would without doubt change to some extent our representation of the
gradual development of the soul and genius of the poet, but it would
hardly at all change our mode of interpreting his great ode. Those
who despair of historical truth, owing to the lack of a verifiable
certainty of some particulars, or to the uncertainty and dubiety that
surrounds it, resemble him who, having forgotten the chronicle of his
life in this or that year, should think that he did not know himself
in his present condition, which is both the recapitulation of his past
and carries with it his past in all that it really concerns him to
know. But, on the other hand, attested evidence that has been field
to be true is a stimulus to us to search ourselves more closely, an
enrichment of what we have found by means of analysis and meditation
and a confirmation or proof of our thoughts, which are not to be
neglected, especially when true evidence and attested evidence agree
with one another. To refuse the assistance and the facilities afforded
by attested evidence, owing to the fear that some of it may prove
false, or because all of it possesses an external and somewhat general
and vague character, would be to refuse _the authority of the human
race,_ and so to commit the sin of Descartes and of Malebranche. This
great refusal does not concern or assist the understanding of history.
All that does matter and does assist is that authority--including the
authority of the human race--should never be allowed to take the place
of the _thought of humanity,_ to which, in any case, belongs the first
place.




APPENDIX II


ANALOGY AND ANOMALY OF SPECIAL HISTORIES


In the course of the preceding theoretical explanations we have denied
both the idea of a _universal history_ (in time and space)[1] and that
of a _general history_ (of the spirit in its indiscriminate generality
or unity),[2] and have insisted instead upon the opposite view with its
two clauses: that history is always _particular_ and always _special,_
and that these two determinations constitute precisely concrete and
effective _universality_ and concrete and effective _unity._ What has
been declared impossible, then, does not represent in any way a loss,
for it is on the one hand fictitious universality or the universality
of _fancy,_ and on the other abstract _universality,_ or, if it be
preferred, _confused_ universality. So-called universal histories
have therefore shown themselves to be particular histories, which
have assumed that title for purposes of literary notoriety, or as
collections, views, and chroniclistical compilations of particular
histories, or, finally, as romances. In like manner, general inclusive
histories are either so only in name, or set different histories side
by side, or they are metaphysical and metaphorical playthings.

As a result of this double but converging negation, it is also
advisable to refute a common and deeply rooted belief (which we
ourselves at one time shared to some extent)[3] that we should arrive
at the re-establishment of the universality of the fancy: or that
there are some among the special histories, constituted according
to the various forms of the spirit (general and individual only
in so far as every form of the spirit is the whole spirit in that
form), which require universal treatment and others only treatment
as monographs. The typical instance generally adduced is that of
the difference between the history of philosophy and the history of
poetry or of art. The subject of the former is supposed to be the one
great philosophical problem that interests all men, of the latter
the sentimental or imaginative problems of particular moments, or at
the most of particular artists. Thus the former is supposed to be
continuous, the latter discontinuous, the former capable of complete
universal vision, the second only of a sequence of particular visions.
But a more 'realistic' conception of philosophy deprives it of this
privilege as compared with the history of art and poetry or of any
other special history; for, appearances notwithstanding, it is not
true that men have concentrated upon one philosophical problem only,
whose successive solutions, less and less inadequate, compose a single
line of progress, the universal history of the human spirit, affording
support and unification to all other histories. The opposite is the
truth: the philosophical problems that men have treated of and will
treat of are infinite, and each one of them is always particularly
and individually determined. The illusion as to the uniqueness of the
problem is due to logical misapprehension, increased by historical
contingencies, whence a problem which owing to religious motives seemed
supreme has been looked upon as unique or fundamental, and groupings
and generalizations made for practical ends have been held to be real
identity and unity.[4] 'Universal' histories of philosophy, too, like
the others, when we examine them with a good magnifying glass, are
revealed as either particular histories of the problem that engages the
philosopher-historian, or arbitrary artificial constructions, or tables
and collections of many different historical sequences, in the manner
of a manual or encyclopædia of philosophical history. Certainly nothing
forbids the composition of abridgments of philosophical histories,
containing classifications of particular problems and representing the
principal thinkers of all peoples and of all times as occupied with one
or another class of problem. This, however, is always a chroniclistical
and naturalistic method of treating the history of philosophy, which
only really lives when a new thinker connects the problems already set
in the past and its intrinsic antecedents with the definite problem
that occupies his attention. He provisionally sets aside others with
a different connexion, though without for that reason suppressing
them, intending rather to recall them when another problem makes
their presence necessary. It is for this reason that even in those
abridgments that seem to be the most complete and 'objective' (that
is to say, 'material') a certain selection does appear, due to the
theoretical interest of the writer, who never altogether ceases to be a
historiographer-philosopher. The procedure is in fact just that of the
history of art and poetry, where what is really historical treatment,
living and complete, is the thought or criticism of individual poetical
personalities, and the rest a table of criticisms, an abridgment due
to contiguity of time or place, affinity of matter or similarity of
temperament, or to degrees of artistic excellence. Nor must we say that
every philosophic problem is linked to all the others and is always a
problem of the whole of philosophy, thus differing from the cases of
poetry and art, for there is no diversity here either, and the whole of
history and the entire universe are immanent in every single work of
art.

Now that we have likewise reduced philosophies of history to the rank
of particular histories, it is scarcely necessary to demonstrate
that the demand being made in several quarters for a 'universal'
or 'general' history of science is without foundation. For such
a history would be impossible to write, even if we were able to
identify or compare the history of science with chat of philosophy.
But it is doubly impossible both because there are comprised under
the name of 'science' such diverse forms as sciences of observation
and mathematical sciences, and also because in each of these classes
themselves the several disciplines remain separate, owing to the
irreducible variety of data and postulates from which they spring.
If, as we have pointed out, every particular philosophical problem
links and places itself in harmony with all other philosophical
problems, every scientific problem tends, on the contrary, to shut
itself up in itself, and there is no more destructive tendency in
science than that of 'explaining' all the facts by means of a 'single
principle,' substituting, that is to say, an unfruitful metaphysic
for fruitful science, allowing an empty word to act as a magic wand,
and by 'explaining everything' to 'explain' nothing at all. The unity
admitted by the history of the sciences is not that which connects
one theory with another and one science with another in an imaginary
general history of science, but that which connects each science and
each theory with the intellectual and social complex of the moment in
which it appeared. But even here too we must utter the warning that in
thus explaining their true nature we do not wish to contest the right
to existence of tables and encyclopædias of the history of science,
far less to throw discredit upon the present direction of studies, by
means of which, at the call of the history of the sciences, useful
Research is stimulated in directions that have been long neglected.
Nor do we intend to move any objection to histories of science in the
form of tables and encyclopædias on the ground that it is impossible
for the same student to be equally competent as to problems of quite
different nature, such as are those of the various sciences; for it
is inconceivable that a philosopher exists with a capacity equal to
the understanding of each and every philosophical problem (indeed, the
mind of the best solver of certain problems is usually the more closed
to others); or that a critic and historian of poetry and art exists
who tastes and enjoys equally all forms of poetry and art, however
versatile he be. Each one has his sphere marked out more or less
narrowly, and each is universal only by means of his particularity.

Finally, we shall not repeat the same demonstration for political
history and ethics, where the claim to represent the whole of history
in a single line of development has had less occasion to manifest
itself. It is usually more readily admitted there that every history
is particular--that is to say, determined by the political and ethical
problem or problems with which history is concerned in time and place,
and which every history therefore occasionally rethinks from the
beginning. The _analogy,_ then, between different kinds of special
history is to be considered perfect, and the anomaly between them
excluded, for they all obey the principle of particularity, that is,
particular universality (whatever be the appearance to the contrary).
But if, as histories, they all proceed according to the nature of what
we have explained as historiography, in so far as they are _special_
each one conforms to the concept of its speciality. It is in this sense
alone that each one is anomalous in respect to the others, preserving,
that is to say, its own peculiar nature. We have explained that the
claim to treat the history of poetry and of art in the same way as
philosophy is erroneous, not only because it misconceives the true
concept of history, but also because it misrepresents the nature of
art, conceiving it as philosophy and dissipating it in a dialectic
of concepts, or because it leaves out, in the history of art, just
that by reason of which art is art, looking upon it as something
secondary, or at best giving it a place beside the social or conceptual
activities. This error is precisely analogous to that of those who
from time to time suggest what they term the 'psychological' reform of
philosophy--that is to say, they would like to treat it as dependent
upon the psychology of philosophers and of the social environment, thus
placing it on a level, sometimes with the history of the sentiments,
at others with that of fancies and Utopias, or with what is not
the history of philosophizing. Such persons lack the knowledge of
what _philosophy_ is, as the others lack the knowledge of _poetry_
and _art_. Anyone desirous of arriving at a rapid knowledge of the
difference between the history of philosophy and the history of poetry
should observe how the one, owing to the nature of its object, is led
to examine theories in so far as they are the _work of pure mind,_
and therefore to develop a history in which thoughts represent the
_dramatis personæ,_ while the other is led by the nature of its object
to examine works of art in so far as they are works of imagination,
which gives expression to movements of feeling, and therefore to
develop a history of imaginative and sensitive points of view. The
former, therefore, though it does not neglect actions, events, and
imagination, regards them as the _humus_ of pure thought and takes
the form of a history of concepts _without persons,_ either real or
imaginary, while the latter, which also does not neglect actions,
events, and thoughts in its turn regards them as the humus of imaginary
creations and takes the form of a history of ideal or imaginary
_personalities,_ which have divested themselves of the ballast of
practical interests and of the curb of concepts. The plans, too, which
they draw up and with which they cannot dispense, any more than can any
human dialectic, answer to these different tendencies--that is to say,
with the one they are schemes or general types of modes of thinking,
with the other schemes containing ideal personalities.

If the history of philosophy has several times tried to devour the
history of poetry and art, it may also be said to have several times
tried to devour the _history of practice,_ that of politics and ethics,
or 'social history,' as people prefer to call it in our day. It has
also been asserted that such history should be set free from the
chroniclism in which it had become involved and assume a scientific and
rigorous form. To do this, it was heedful to reduce it to a history
of 'ideas,' which are the true and essential practical acts, because
they generate them--that is to say, the error which we noted above in
respect to poetry and art has here been repeated. What is peculiar to
practical acts has been neglected, and only the 'ideas,' which are
their antecedents and consequents, have been retained. But on other
occasions the 'ideas' to which it was claimed to reduce practical
acts were not really ideas or intellectual formations, but truly
practical acts, sentiments, dispositions, customs, institutions. The
originality of political and ethical history was thus unconsciously
confirmed. Its object is just what can be designated with the single
word _institutions,_ taking the word in its widest signification--that
is to say, understanding by it all practical arrangements of human
individuals and societies, from the most recondite sentiments to the
most obvious modes of life (which, too, are always will in action).
All are equally historical productions, the sole effective historical
productions perceivable according to the practical form of the
spirit. If the patrimony of judgments, as the capital with and upon
which our modern thought works, is the result of a long history, of
which we become conscious from time to time, illustrating now one
and now another of its particular aspects at the solicitation of new
needs, so also what we can now practically _do_, all our sentiments
as so-called civilized men--courage, honour, dignity, love, modesty,
and the like--all our institutions in the strict sense of the term
(which are themselves due to attitudes of the spirit, utilitarian or
moral)--the family, the state, commerce, industry, military affairs,
and so on--have a long history; and according as one or other of those
sentiments or institutions enters upon a crisis, as the result of new
wants, we attempt to ascertain its true 'nature'--that is to say, its
historical genesis. Anyone who has followed the developments of modern
social historiography with care and attention has been able to see
clearly that its aim is precisely to arrange the _chroniclistic chaos_
of disaggregated notes of events in _ordered series of histories of
social values,_ and that its field of research is the history of the
human soul in its practical aspect; either when it produces general
histories of _civilization_ (always due to particular motives and
limited by them), or when it presents histories _of classes, peoples,
social currents, sentiments, institutions,_ and so forth.

_Biography,_ too (only when not limited to a mere chroniclistic
collection of the experiences of an individual or to a poetical
portrait, improperly regarded as a historical work), is the history of
an 'institution' in the philosophical acceptation of the word and forms
part of the history of practice: because the individual, in the same
way as a people or a social class, is the formation of a character, or
complex of specific attitudes and actions consequent upon them; and it
is of this that historical biography consists, not of the individual
looked upon as external or private or physical, or whatever it be
called.

We might be expected to indicate the place or function of the _history
of science_ and of _religion,_ in order to render to a certain extent
complete this rapid review of special histories, in which general
history realizes itself in turn--it never exists outside of them. But
if science differs from philosophy in being partly theoretical and
partly practical, and religion is an attempt to explain reality by
means of myth and to direct the work of man according to an ideal, it
is evident that the history of science enters to some extent into the
history of philosophical thought and to some extent forms part of that
of needs and institutions; indeed, since the moment which sets science
to work and endows it with its peculiar character is the practical or
suitable moment, it really belongs to the history of institutions in
the very wide sense described; and the history of religion forms to
some extent part of the history of institutions and to some extent
part of the history of philosophy; indeed, since the dominating moment
is here mythical conception or philosophical effort, the history of
religion is substantially that of philosophy. Other more particular
disquisitions in connexion with this argument would be out of place
in the present treatise, which is not especially concerned with the
theory and methodology of particular special histories (coincident with
the treatment of the various spheres of philosophy, æsthetics, logic,
etc.), and aims only at indicating the directions in which they must
necessarily develop.[5]


[1] _Supra,_ pp. 55-59.

[2] _Supra,_ pp. 119-122.

[3] In the _Æsthetic,_ I, ch. xvii.

[4] See Appendix III.

[5] It will be of further use to draw attention here, in a note, to
the already mentioned distinction between the history of practice in
politics and in ethics, because thus alone can be set at rest the
variance which runs through historiography, between political history
or history of states and history of humanity or of civilization,
especially from the eighteenth century onward. In Germany it is
one of the elements in the intricate debate between _Geschichte_
and _Kulturgeschichte,_ and it has sometimes been described as a
conflict between French historiography (Voltaire and his followers),
or _histoire de la civilisation,_ and the Germanic (Möser and his
followers), or history of the state. One side would absorb and
subject the history of culture or social history to that of the
state, the other would do the opposite; and the eclectics, as usual,
without knowing much about it, place the one beside the other, inert,
history of politics and history of civilization, thus destroying the
unity of history. The truth is that political history and history
of civilization have the same relations between one another in the
practical field as those between the history of poetry or of art and
the history of philosophy or thought in the theoretical field. They
correspond to two eternal moments of the spirit--that of the pure will,
or economic moment, and that of the ethical will. Hence we also see why
some will always be attracted rather by the one than the other form of
history: according as to whether they are moved chiefly by political or
chiefly by moral interests.




APPENDIX III


PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY


Having established the unity of philosophy and historiography, and
shown that the division between the two has but a literary and didactic
value, because it is founded upon the possibility of placing in the
foreground of verbal exposition now one and now the other of the two
dialectical elements of that unity, it is well to make quite clear what
is the true object of the treatises bearing the traditional title of
philosophic 'theory' or 'system': to what (in a word) _philosophy can
be reduced._

Philosophy, in consequence of the new relation in which it has been
placed, cannot of necessity be anything but the _methodological moment
of historiography_: a dilucidation of the categories constitutive
of historical judgments, or of the concepts that direct historical
interpretation. And since historiography has for content the concrete
life of the spirit, and this life is life of imagination and of
thought, of action and of morality (or of something else, if anything
else can be thought of), and in this variety of its forms remains
always one, the dilucidation moves in distinguishing between æsthetic
and logic, between economic and ethic, uniting and dissolving them
all in the philosophy of the spirit. If a philosophical problem shows
itself to be altogether sterile for the historical judgment, we have
there the proof that such problem is otiose, badly stated, and in
reality does not exist. If the solution of a problem--that is to
say, of a philosophical proposition--instead of making history more
intelligible, leaves it obscure or confounds it with others, or leaps
over it and lightly condemns or negates it, we have there the proof
that such proposition and the philosophy with which it is connected
are arbitrary, though it may preserve interest in other respects, as a
manifestation of sentiment or of imagination.

The definition of philosophy as 'methodology' is not at first exempt
from doubts, even on the part of one ready to accept in general the
tendency that it represents; because philosophy and methodology are
terms often contrasted, and a philosophy that leads to a methodology
is apt to be tainted with empiricism. But certainly the methodology
of which we are here speaking is not at all empirical; indeed, it
appears just for the purpose of correcting and taking the place of the
empirical methodology of professional historians and of other such
specialists in all that greater part of it where it is a true and
proper, though defective, attempt toward the philosophical solution
of the theoretical problems raised by the study of history, or toward
philosophical methodology and philosophy as methodology.

If, however, the above-mentioned dispute is settled as soon as stated,
this cannot be said of another, where our position finds itself opposed
to a widely diffused and ancient conception of philosophy as the
solver of the mystery of the universe, knowledge of ultimate reality,
revelation of the world of noumena, which is held to be beyond the
world of phenomena, in which we move in ordinary life and in which
history also moves. This is not the place to give the history of that
idea; but we must at least say this, that its origin is religious or
mythological, and that it persisted even among those philosophers
who were most successful in directing thought toward our earth as the
sole reality, and initiated the new philosophy as methodology of the
judgment or of historical knowledge. It persisted in Kant, who admitted
it as the limit of his criticism; it persisted in Hegel, who framed his
subtle researches in logic and philosophy of the spirit in a sort of
mythology of the Idea.

Nevertheless, the diversity of the two conceptions manifested itself
in an ever-increasing ratio, finding expression in various formulas
of the nineteenth century, such as _psychology against metaphysic,_
a philosophy of _experience and immanence, aprioristic_ against
_transcendental_ philosophy, _positivism_ against _idealism_; and
although the polemic was as a rule ill conducted, going beyond the
mark and ending by unconsciously embracing that very metaphysic,
transcendency, and apriority, that very abstract idealism, which it
had set out to combat, the sentiment that inspired it was legitimate.
And the philosophy of methodology has made it its own, has combated
the same adversary with better arms, has certainly insisted upon a
psychological view, but a speculative psychological view, immanent
in history, but dialectically immanent, differing in this from
positivism, that while the latter made necessary the contingent, it
made the contingent necessary, thus affirming the right of thought to
the hegemony. Such a philosophy is just philosophy as history (and so
history as philosophy), and the determination of the philosophical
moment in the purely categorical and methodological moment.

The greater vigour of this conception in respect to the opposite,
the superiority of philosophy as _methodology_ over philosophy as
_metaphysic,_ is shown by the capacity of the former to solve the
problems of the latter by criticizing them and pointing out their
origin. Metaphysic, on the other hand, is incapable of solving not only
the problems of methodology, but even its own problems, without having
recourse to the fantastic and arbitrary. Thus questions as to the
reality of the external world, of soul-substance, of the unknowable,
of dualisms and of antitheses, and so forth, have disappeared in
gnoseological doctrines, which have substituted better conceptions for
those which we formerly possessed concerning the logic of the sciences,
explaining those questions as eternally renascent aspects of the
dialectic or phenomenology of knowledge.

The view of philosophy as metaphysic is, however, so inveterate and so
tenacious that it is not surprising that it should still give some sign
of life in the minds of those who have set themselves free of it in
general, but have not applied themselves to eradicating it in all its
particulars, nor closed all the doors by which it may return in a more
or less unexpected manner. And if we rarely find it openly and directly
displayed now, we may yet discern or suspect it in one or other of its
aspects or attitudes, persisting like kinks of the mind, or unconscious
preconceptions, which threaten to drive philosophy as methodology back
into the wrong path, and to prepare the return, though but for a brief
period, of the metaphysic that has been superseded.

It seems to me opportune to provide here a clear statement of some of
these preconceptions, tendencies, and habits, pointing out the errors
which they contain and entail.

First of all the survivals of the past that are still common comes the
view of philosophy as having a fundamental problem to solve. Now the
conception of a fundamental problem is intrinsically at variance with
that of philosophy as history, and with the treatment of philosophy
as methodology of history, which posits, and cannot do otherwise
than posit, the _infinity_ of philosophical problems, all certainly
connected with one another, but not one of which can be considered
fundamental, for just the same reason that no single part of an
organism is the foundation of all the others, but each one is in its
turn foundation and founded. If, indeed, methodology take the substance
of its problems from history, history in its most modest but concrete
form of history of ourselves, of each one of us as an individual, this
shows us that we pass on from one to another particular philosophical
problem at the promptings of our life as it is lived, and that one or
the other group or class of problems holds the field or has especial
interest for us, according to the epochs of our life. And we find the
same to be the case if we look at the wider but less definite spectacle
afforded by the already mentioned general history of philosophy--that
is to say, that according to times and peoples, philosophical problems
relating sometimes to morality, sometimes to politics, to religion,
or to the natural sciences and mathematics, have in turn the upper
hand. Every particular philosophical problem has been a problem of the
whole of philosophy, either openly or by inference, but we never meet
with a _general problem of philosophy,_ owing to the contradiction
thereby implied. And if there does seem to be one (and it certainly
does seem so), it is really a question of appearances, due to the
fact that modern philosophy, which comes to us from the Middle Ages
and was elaborated during the religious struggles of the Renaissance,
has preserved a strong imprint of _theology_ in its didactic form,
not less than in the psychological disposition of the greater part of
those addicted to it. Hence arises the fundamental and almost unique
importance usurped by the problem of thought and being, which after
all was nothing more than the old problem of this world and the next,
of earth and heaven, in a critical and gnoseological form. But those
who destroyed or who initiated the destruction of heaven and of the
other world and of transcendental philosophy by immanent philosophy
began at the same moment to corrode the conception of a fundamental
problem, although they were not fully aware of this (for we have said
above that they remained trammelled in the philosophy of the Thing
in Itself or in the Mythology of the Idea). That problem was rightly
fundamental for religious spirits, who held that the whole intellectual
and practical dominion of the world was nothing, unless they had saved
their own souls or their own thought in another world, in the knowledge
of a world of noumena and reality. But such it was not destined to
remain for the philosophers, henceforth restricted to the world alone
or to nature, which has no skin and no kernel and is all of a piece.
What would happen were we to resume belief in a fundamental problem,
dominating all others? The other problems would either have to be
considered as all dependent upon it and therefore solved with it, or
as problems no longer philosophical but empirical. That is to say, all
the problems appearing every day anew in science and life would lose
their value, either becoming a tautology of the fundamental solution or
being committed to empirical treatment. Thus the distinction between
philosophy and methodology, between metaphysic and philosophy of the
spirit, would reappear, the first transcendental as regards the second,
the second aphilosophical as regards the first.

Another view, arising from the old metaphysical conception of the
function of philosophy, leads to the rejection of distinction in favour
of _unity,_ thus conforming to the theological conception that all
distinctions are unified by absorption in God, and to the religious
point of view, which forgets the world and its necessities in the
vision of God. From this ensues a disposition which may be described
as something between indifferent, accommodating, or weak, in respect
of particular problems, and the pernicious doctrine of the double
faculty is almost tacitly renewed, that is, of intellectual intuition
or other superior cognoscitive faculty, peculiar to the philosopher
and leading to the vision of true reality, and of criticism or thought
prone to interest itself in the contingent and thus greatly inferior
in degree and free to proceed with a lack of speculative rigour not
permissible in the other. Such a disposition led to the worst possible
consequences in the philosophical treatises of the Hegelian school,
where the disciples (differing from the master) generally gave evidence
of having meditated but little or not at all upon the problems of the
various spiritual forms, freely accepting vulgar opinions concerning
them, or engaging in them with the indifference of men sure of the
essential, and therefore cutting and mutilating them without pity, in
order to force them into their pre-established schemes with all haste,
thus getting rid of difficulties by means of this illusory arrangement.
Hence the emptiness and tiresomeness of their philosophies, from
which the historian, or the man whose attention is directed to the
understanding of the particular and the concrete, failed to learn
anything that could be of use to him in the direction of his own
studies and in the clearer formulation of his own judgments. And since
the mythology of the idea reappeared in positivism as mythology of
evolution, here too particular problems (which are indeed the only
philosophical problems) received merely schematic and empty treatment
and did not progress at all. Philosophy as history and methodology of
history restores honour to the virtue of acuteness or discernment,
which the theological unitarianism of metaphysic tended to depreciate:
discernment, which is prosaic but severe, hard and laborious but
prolific, which sometimes assumes the unsympathetic aspect of
scholasticism and pedantry, but is also of use in this aspect, like
every discipline, and holds that the neglect of distinction for unity
is also intimately opposed to the conception of philosophy as history.

A third tendency (I beg to be allowed to proceed by enumeration of the
various sides of the same mental attitude for reasons of convenience),
a third tendency also seeks the _definitive_ philosophy, untaught by
the historical fact that no philosophy has ever been definitive or has
set a limit to thought, or has ever been thoroughly convinced that
the perpetual changing of philosophy with the world which perpetually
changes is not by any means a defect, but is the nature itself of
thought and reality. Or, rather, such teaching, and the proposition
that follows it, do not fail altogether of acceptance, and they are
led to believe that the spirit, ever growing upon itself, produces
thoughts and systems that are ever new. But since they have retained
the presupposition of a fundamental problem which (as we have said)
substantially consists of the ancient problem of religion alone,
and each problem well determined implies a single solution, the
solution given of the 'fundamental problem' naturally claims to be
the definitive solution of the problem of philosophy itself. A new
solution could not appear without a new problem (owing to the logical
unity of problem and solution); but that problem, which is superior
to all the others, is on the contrary the only one. Thus a definitive
philosophy, assumed in the conception of the fundamental problem, is at
variance with historical experience, and more irreconcilably, because
in a more evidently logical manner, with philosophy as history, which,
admitting infinite problems, denies the claim for and the expectation
of a definitive philosophy. Every philosophy is definitive for the
problem which it solves, but not for the one that appears immediately
afterward, at the foot of the first, nor for the other problems which
will arise from the solution of this. To close the series would be to
turn from philosophy to religion and to rest in God.

Indeed, the fourth preconception, which we now proceed to state, and
which links itself with the preceding, and, together with all the
preceding, to the theological nature of the old metaphysic, concerns
the _figure of the philosopher,_ as Buddha or the Awakened One, who
posits himself as superior to others (and to himself in the moments
when he is not a philosopher), because he holds himself to be free from
human passions, illusions, and agitations by means of philosophy. This
is the case with the believer, who fixes his mind upon God and shakes
off earthly cares, like the lover, who feels himself blessed in the
possession of the beloved and defies the whole world. But the world
soon takes its revenge both upon the believer and the lover, and does
not fail to insist upon its rights. Such an illusion is impossible for
the philosophical historian, who differs from the other in feeling
himself irresistibly involved in the course of history, as at once both
subject and object, and who is therefore led to negate felicity or
beatitude, as he negates every other abstraction (because, as has been
well said, _le bonheur est le contraire de la sensation de vivre_), and
to accept life as it is, as joy that overcomes sorrow and perpetually
produces new sorrows and new unstable joys. And history, which he
thinks as the only truth, is the work of tireless thought, which
conditions practical work, as practical work conditions the new work of
thought. Thus the primacy formerly attributed to the contemplative life
is now transferred not to active life, but to life in its integrity,
which is at once thought and action. And every man is a philosopher
(in his circle, however wide or narrow it may appear), and every
philosopher is a man, indissolubly linked to the conditions of human
life, which it is not given to anyone to transcend. The mystical or
apocalyptic philosopher of the Græco-Roman decadence was well able to
separate himself from the world: the great thinkers, like Hegel, who
inaugurated the epoch of modern philosophy, although they denied the
primacy of the abstract contemplative life, were liable to fall back
into the error of belief in this supremacy and to conceive a sphere of
absolute spirit, a process of liberation through art, religion, and
philosophy, as a means of reaching it; but the once sublime figure of
the philosopher blessed in the absolute, when we try to revive it in
this modern world of ours, becomes tinged with the comic. It is true
that satire has now but little material upon which to exercise itself,
and is reduced to aiming its shafts at the 'professors of philosophy'
(according to the type of philosopher that has been created by modern
universities, which is partly the heir of the 'master of theology'
of the Middle Ages): against the professors, that is to say, to the
extent that they continue to repeat mechanically abstract general
propositions, and seem to be unmoved by the passions and the problems
that press upon them from all sides and vainly ask for more concrete
and actual treatment. But the function and the social figure of the
philosopher have profoundly changed, and we have not said that the
manner of being of the 'professors of philosophy' will not also change
in its turn--that is to say, that the way of teaching philosophy in
the universities and schools is not on the verge of experiencing a
crisis, which will eliminate the last remains of the medieval fashion
of formalistic philosophizing. A strong advance in philosophical
culture should lead to this result: that all students of human affairs,
jurists, economists, moralists, men of letters--in other words, all
students of historical matters--should become conscious and disciplined
philosophers, and that thus the philosopher in general, the _purus
philosophus,_ should find no place left for him among the professional
specifications of knowledge. With the disappearance of the philosopher
'in general' would also disappear the last social vestige of the
teleologist or metaphysician, and of the Buddha or Awakened One.

There is also a prejudice which to some extent inquinates the manner
of _culture_ of students of philosophy. They are accustomed to have
recourse almost exclusively to the books of philosophers, indeed of
philosophers 'in general,' of the metaphysical system-makers, in the
same way as the student of theology formed himself upon the sacred
texts. This method of culture, which is perfectly consequent when
a start is made from the presupposition of a fundamental or single
problem, of which it is necessary to know the different diverging
and progressive solutions which have been attempted, is altogether
inconsequent and inadequate in the case of a historical and immanent
philosophy, which draws its material from all the most varied
impressions of life and from all intuitions and reflections upon life.
That form of culture is the reason for the aridity of the treatment of
certain particular problems, for which is necessary a continued contact
with daily experience (art and art criticism for æsthetic, politics,
economy, judicial trials for the philosophy of rights, positive and
mathematical sciences for the gnoseology of the sciences, and so on).
To it is also due the aridity of treatment of those parts of philosophy
themselves which are traditionally considered to constitute 'general
philosophy,' for they too had their origin in life, and we must refer
them back to life if we are to give a satisfactory interpretation of
their propositions; we must plunge them into life again to develop
them and to find in them new aspects. The _whole of history_ is the
foundation of philosophy as history, and to limit its foundation to
the _history of philosophy_ alone, and of 'general' or 'metaphysical'
philosophy, is impossible, save by unconsciously adhering to the old
idea of philosophy, not as methodology but as metaphysic, which is the
fifth of the prejudices that we are enumerating.

This enumeration can be both lengthened and ended with the mention of a
sixth preconception, relating to _philosophical exposition._ Owing to
this, philosophy is expected to have either an architectural form, as
though it were a temple consecrated to the Eternal, or a warm poetical
form, as though it were a hymn to the Eternal. But these forms were
part of the old content, and that form is now changed. Philosophy
shows itself to be a dilucidation of the categories of historical
interpretation rather than the grandiose architecture of a temple or a
sacred hymn running on conventional lines. Philosophy is discussion,
polemic, rigorous didactic exposition, which is certainly coloured
with the sentiments of the writer, like every other literary form,
able also at times to raise its voice (or on the other hand to become
slight and playful, according to circumstances), but not constrained to
observe rules which appear to be proper to a theological or religious
content. Philosophy treated as methodology has, so to speak, caused
philosophical exposition to descend from poetry to prose.

All the preconceptions, habits, and tendencies which I have briefly
described should in my opinion be carefully sought out and eliminated,
for it is they that impede philosophy from taking the form and
proceeding in the mode suitable and adequate to the consciousness of
the unity with history which it has reached. If we look merely at
the enormous amount of psychological observations and moral doubts
accumulated in the course of the nineteenth century by poetry, fiction,
and drama, those voices of our society, and consider that in great part
it remains without critical treatment, some idea can be formed of the
immense amount of work that falls to philosophy to accomplish. And if
on the other hand we observe the multitude of anxious questions that
the great European War has everywhere raised--as to the state, as to
history, as to rights, as to the functions of the different peoples, as
to civilization, culture, and barbarism, as to science, art, religion,
as to the end and ideal of life, and so on--we realize the duty of
philosophers to issue forth from the theologico-metaphysical circle in
which they remain confined even when they refuse to hear of theology
and metaphysic. For notwithstanding their protests, and notwithstanding
the new conception accepted and professed by them, they really remain
intellectually and spiritually attached to the old ideas.

Even the _history itself of philosophy_ has hitherto been renewed only
to a small extent, in conformity with the new conception of philosophy.
This new conception invites us to direct our attention to thoughts
and thinkers, long neglected or placed in the second rank and not
considered to be truly philosophers because they did not treat directly
the 'fundamental problem' of philosophy or the great _peut-être,_ but
were occupied with 'particular problems.' These particular problems,
how-ever, were destined to produce eventually a change of view as
regards the 'general problem,' which emerged itself reduced to the
rank of a 'particular' problem. It is simply the result of prejudice
to look upon a Machiavelli, who posited the conception of the modern
state, a Baltasar Gracian, who examined the question of acuteness in
practical matters, a Pascal, who criticized the spirit of Jesuitry, a
Vico, who renewed all the sciences of the spirit, or a Hamann, with
his keen sense of the value of tradition, as minor philosophers, I do
not say in comparison with some metaphysician of little originality,
but even when compared with a Descartes or a Spinoza, who dealt with
_other_ but not _superior_ problems. A schematic and bloodless history
of philosophy corresponded, in fact, with the philosophy of the
'fundamental problem.' A far richer, more varied and pliant philosophy
should correspond with philosophy as methodology, which holds to be
philosophy not only what appertains to the problems of immanency, of
transcendency, of this world and the next, but everything that has
been of avail in increasing the patrimony of guiding conceptions, the
understanding of actual history, and the formation of the reality of
thought in which we live.




PART II


CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY




I


PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS


We possess many works relating to the history of historiography, both
special, dealing with individual authors, and more or less general,
dealing with groups of authors (histories of historiography confined
to one people and to a definite period, or altogether 'universal'
histories). Not only have we bibliographical works and works of
erudition, but criticism, some of it excellent, especially in the case
of German scientific literature, ever the most vigilant of all in not
leaving unexplored any nook or cranny of the dominion of knowledge.
It cannot, therefore, form part of my design to treat the theme from
its foundations: but I propose to make a sort of appendix or critical
annotation to the collection of books and essays that I have read upon
the argument. I will not say that these are all, or even that they are
all those of any importance, but they ire certainly a considerable
number. By means of this annotation I shall try to establish, on the
one hand, in an exact manner and in conformity with the principles
explained, the method of such a history, regarding which I observe
that there still exist confusion and perplexity, even among the best,
which lead to errors of judgment or at least of plan, and on the
other hand I shall try to outline the principal periods in a summary
manner, both with the view of exemplifying the method established,
and, as it were, of illustrating historically the concepts exposed in
the preceding theoretical pages, which might otherwise retain here and
there something of an abstract appearance.

Beginning with methodical delimitations, I shall note in the first
place that in a history of historiography as such, historical writings
cannot be looked upon from the point of view proper to a _history of
literature_--that is to say, as expressions of individual sentiments,
as forms of art. Doubtless they are this also, and have a perfect right
to form part of histories of literature, as the treatises and systems
of the philosophers, the writings of Plato and Aristotle, of Bruno,
of Leibnitz, and of Hegel; but in this case both are regarded not as
works of history and of philosophy, but of literature and poetry; and
the empirical scale of values which constitute the different modes
of history in the cases of the same authors is different, because
in a history of literature the place of a Plato will always be more
considerable than that of an Aristotle, that of a Bruno than that of
a Leibnitz, owing to the greater amount of passion and the greater
richness of artistic problems contained in the former of each pair.
The fact that in many volumes of literary history such diversity of
treatment is not observed, and historians are talked of historically
and not in a literary manner and philosophers philosophically rather
than in a literary manner, is due to the substitution in such
works of incoherent compilation for work that is properly critical
and scientific. But the distinction between the two aspects is
important for this reason also, that erroneous judgments, praise, and
censure, alike unjustified, are apt to appear, owing to the careless
transference of the scale of values from one history to another. The
slight esteem in which Polybius was held in antiquity and for some
time after, because 'he did not write well' in comparison with the
splendour of Livy or with the emotional intensity of Tacitus, is an
instance of this, as is likewise in Italy the excessive praise lavished
upon certain historians who were little more than correct and elegant
writers of prose in comparison with others who were negligent and crude
in their form, but serious students. Ulrici,[1] in his youthful book
on ancient historiography, which despite its heaviness and verbosity
of exposition has great merits, after having discussed the 'scientific
value' of that historiography, also speaks at great length of 'artistic
value'; but setting aside what of arbitrary is to be found in some of
the laws that he applies to historiography as art, in conformity with
the æsthetic ideas of his time, it is evident that the second subject
of which he treats does not coalesce with the first and is only placed
side by side with it in the same way as those sections of works dealing
with historical method are not connected but simply juxtaposed, and
after having studied in their own way the formation of historical
thought, the collection of materials or 'heuristic,' up to final
'comprehension,' begin to discuss the form of the 'exposition,' and in
so doing continue without being aware of it the method of rhetorical
treatises on the art of history composed during the Renaissance. These
have their chief exponent in Vossius (1623). We cannot abstain from
sometimes mentioning the literary form of the works of historians,
nor from according their laurels to works of remarkable literary
value, while noting their unsatisfactory historiographical methods;
but to touch here and there upon, to discuss, to characterize, to
eliminate, is of secondary importance and does not form part of the
proper function of historiography, whose object is the _development of
historiographical thought._

The distinction between this history and that of _philology_ or
_erudition_ is less apparent but not less indubitable, always, be it
well understood, in the sense explained, of a distinction that is not
a separation. This warning should be understood in respect of other
exclusions that we are about to effect, without our being obliged
to repeat it at every step; for the connexion between history and
philology is undeniable, not less than that between history and art,
or history and practical life. But that does not prevent philology
in itself being the collection, the rearrangement, the purification
of material, and not history. Owing to this quality it forms a part
rather of the history of culture than of that of thought. It would be
impossible to disassociate it from the history of libraries, archives,
museums, universities, seminaries, _écoles des chartes,_ academical
and editorial enterprises, and from other institutions and proceedings
of an entirely practical nature. Fueter has therefore been right in
excluding from his theme in his recent work on the history of modern
historiography[2] "the history of merely philological research and
criticism." This has not prevented him from taking store where apposite
of the school of Biondo or of that of Maurini, or of the perfecting of
the method of seeking for the sources attained by the German school
in the nineteenth century. The confusion and lack of development
observable in the old and solid work of Wachler[3] is perhaps due to
his having failed to make this distinction, to which recourse can also
be had with advantage elsewhere. Wachler's work, entitled and conceived
as "history of research and of the historical art from the Renaissance
of letters in Europe onward," ended by assuming the appearance of a
repertory or bibliographical catalogue.

The obstacles to be encountered by the distinction between the history
of historiography and that of the _practical tendencies,_ or tendencies
of the _social and political spirit,_ are more intricate. These indeed
become incorporated with or at least leave their mark upon the works
of historians; but it is just because we can only with difficulty
perceive the line of demarcation that it is indispensable to make it
quite clear. Such tendencies, such social and political spirit, belong
rather to the matter than to the theoretical form of history; they are
not so much historiography as history in the act and in its _fieri._
Machiavelli is a historian in so far as he tries to understand the
course of events; he is a politician, or at least a publicist, when
he posits and desires a prince, founder of a strong national state,
as his ideal, reflecting this in his history. This history, in so
far as it portrays that ideal and the inspiration and teaching that
accompany it, here and there becomes fable (_fabula docet_). Thus
Machiavelli belongs partly to the history of thought in the Renaissance
and partly to the history of the practice of the Renaissance. Nor does
this happen solely in political and social historiography, but also
in literary and artistic, because there is not perhaps a critic in
the world, however unprejudiced and broad in his ideas, who does not
manifest tendencies in the direction of a literary renovation of his
epoch together with his actual judgments and reconstructions. Now to
the extent that he does this, even if it be in the same book and on
the same page or in the same period, he is no longer a critic, but
a practical reformer of art. In one domain of history alone is this
pacific accompaniment of interpretations and aspirations impossible--in
the history of philosophy, because when, as here, there is a difference
between historical interpretation and the tendency of the philosopher,
the difference reveals the insufficiency of the interpretation itself:
in other words, if the theory of the historian of philosophy is at war
with the theories of which he claims to expound the history, his theory
must be false, just because it does not avail to justify the history
of the theories. But this exception does not annul the distinction
in other fields; indeed, it confirms it, and is not an exception in
the empirical sense, as it appears to be: thought distinguishes and
is distinguished from sentiment and will, but it is not distinguished
from itself, precisely because it is the principle of distinction.
A methodological corollary of this distinction between history of
historiography and history of practical tendencies is that the
introduction into the first of considerations belonging to the second
is to be held erroneous. Here I think Fueter has sinned to some extent
in the book to which I have already referred, where he divides his
material into humanistic, political, party, imperial, particularist,
Protestant, Catholic, Jesuitic, illuministic, romanticist, erudite,
lirico-subjective, national, statolatral, historiographical, and the
like. Only some of the above divisions belong to, or can properly be
reduced to, historiographical concepts, while the majority refer to
social and political life. Hence the lack of sound organization that
we observe in this book, which is yet so lively and ingenious: its
divisions follow one another without sufficient logicality, continuity,
and necessity, and are not the result of a single thought which posits
them and develops itself through them. If, on the other hand, the
genuinely historiographical portions, which have become mingled with
it, should be eliminated, what remained could certainly be organized,
but as social and political history, no longer as historiography,
because the works of historians would be consulted only as documents
showing the tendencies of the times in which they were written.
Machiavelli, for instance, (to use the same example) would there figure
as an Italian patriot and defender of absolute power, while Vico (a
much greater historian than Machiavelli) would not be able to appear at
all, or hardly at all, because his relation with the political life of
his time was remote and general.

What I have been expounding may be resumed by saying that the history
of historiography is neither _literary_ history nor the history of
cultural, social, political, moral doings, which are of a _practical_
nature, but that it is certainly all these things, by reason of the
unbreakable unity of history, though with it the _accent_ does not fall
upon practical facts, but rather upon _historiographical thought,_
which is its proper subject.

Having pointed out or recalled these distinctions, which, as we have
seen, are sometimes neglected with evil results, we must now utter a
warning against other distinctions, employed without rational basis,
which rather overcloud and trouble the history of historiography than
shed light upon it.

Fueter (I cite him again, although the error is not peculiar to
him) declares that he has dealt in his book with _historiographical
theories_ and with _historical method_ only in so far as they seem
to have had influence upon actual historiography. The history of
historicity (here is the reason he gives for the method he has
followed) is as little the history of historiography as is the history
of dramatic theories the history of the drama. This he considers to
be proved by the fact that theory and practice often follow different
paths, as, for instance, in Lope de Vega, whose theory of the drama
and actual dramatic work were two different things, to such an extent
that it was said of the Spanish dramatist that although he reverenced
the poetical art, when he sat down to compose "he locked up the correct
rules under seven keys." This argument is without doubt specious, and I
was myself formerly seduced by it; but it is fallacious, as I realized
when I thought it over again, and I now affirm it to be an error with
all the conviction and authority of one who criticizes an error at one
time his own. The argument is founded upon a false analogy between the
production of art and that of history. Art, which is the work of the
imagination, can be well distinguished from the theory of art, which
is the work of reflection; artistic genius produces the former, the
speculative intellect the latter, and it often happens with artists
that the speculative intellect is inferior to their genius, so that
they do one thing and say another, or say one thing and do another,
without its being possible to accuse them of logical incoherence,
because the incoherence is between two discordant thoughts, never
between a thought and an act of the imagination. But history and theory
of history are both of them works of thought, bound to one another in
the same way as thought is bound to itself, since it is one. Thus no
historian but possesses in a more or less reflective way his theory of
history, because, not to put too fine a point upon it, every historian
implicitly or explicitly conducts a polemic against other historians
(against other 'versions' and 'judgments' of a fact), and how could
he ever conduct a polemic or criticize others if he did not himself
possess a conception of what history is and ought to be, to which to
refer, a theory of history? The artist, on the other hand, in so far
as he is an artist, does not polemize or criticize, but forms. It
may quite well happen that an erroneous theory of historiography is
expounded, while on the contrary the history as narrated may turn out
to be well constructed. This is, of course, to be incoherent, but is
so neither more nor less than when progress is effected in one branch
of historiography, while there is backwardness in another. There may
obtain, on the contrary, an excellent theory of history, where history
itself is bad; but in the same way that in one field of historiography
there is the sense of and striving for a better method, while there
is adherence to old methods in all the other fields. The history of
historiography is the history of historical thought; and here it is
impossible to distinguish theory of history from history.

Another exclusion which Fueter declares that he has made is that of
the _philosophy of history._ He does not give the reason for this, but
allows it to be understood, for he evidently holds that philosophies of
history do not possess a purely scientific character and are lacking
in truth. But not only are what are called 'philosophies of history'
erroneous conceptions of history, but so also are the naturalistic or
deterministic conceptions opposed to them, and all the various forms of
pseudo-history which have been described above, philological history,
poetical history, rhetorical history. I do not find that he has
excluded these from his history, any more than he has really excluded
the theological and transcendental conception of history (philosophy
of history); indeed, he constantly refers to it. Justice and logic
would insist upon all or none being excluded--all really excluded,
and not merely in words. But to exclude all of them, it may be said,
would be anything but intelligent, because how could the history of
history ever be told in such a void? What is this history but the
struggle of scientific historiography against inadequate scientific
formulas? Certainly the former is the protagonist, but how could a
drama be presented with a protagonist lacking antagonists? And even
if historical philology be not considered directly, but referred back
to philology, if poetical history be referred back to literature,
rhetorical or practical to social and political history, it would
nevertheless be necessary always to take account of the conversion that
often occurs of those various mental constructions into assertions
of reality, taken in exchange for and given the value of true and
proper histories. In this sense they become in turn _deterministic_
or _transcendental_ conceptions of history, and both of them logical
or illogical representations of all the others, and end by becoming
equivalent to one another dialectically, and are always before the
eyes of the historian, because the perpetual condition and the
perpetual sign of the progress of historical thought reside in their
movement, which passes from transcendency or false immanence to pure
immanence, to return to them and enter into a more profound conception
of immanency. To exclude philosophies of history from the history of
historiography does not, therefore, seem to me to be justifiable,
for the same reason as it seems to be unjustifiable to exclude from
it historiographical theories, which are the consciousness that
historiography acquires of itself: owing to their homogeneity, I say,
owing indeed to their identity with history, of which they do not form
accidental ingredients or material elements, but constitute the very
essence. A proof of this is to be found in the _Historical Philosophy
of France_ of Flint. He proceeds from a presumption that is perhaps the
opposite of that of Fueter--that is to say, he treats of the philosophy
of history, and not of history, but finds it impossible to maintain
the dykes between the two. His treatise, therefore, when artificial
obstacles have been overcome, runs like a single river and reveals
to our view the whole history of historical French thought, to which
Bossuet and Rollin, Condorcet and Voltaire, Auguste Comte and Michelet
or Tocqueville equally belong.

At this point it will probably be objected (although Fueter does not
propound this objection, it is probable that it is at the back of
his mind) that what is desired in a history of historiography is not
so much a history of _historical thought_ as a history of _history
in the concrete_: of the _Storie fiorentine_ of Machiavelli, of the
_Siècle de Louis XIV_ of Voltaire, or of the _Römische Geschichte_ of
Niebuhr: that would be a general history, while what is desired is a
specific history. But it is well to pay close attention to the meaning
of such a request and to the possibility of what is asked. If I set
out to write the history of the _Storie fiorentine_ of Machiavelli, in
respect to the particular material with which it deals, I shall rewrite
the history of Florence, criticizing and completing Machiavelli, and
shall thus be, for instance, a Villari, a Davidsohn, or a Salvemini.
If I set out to write the history of the material of Voltaire's work,
I shall criticize Voltaire and outline a new _Siècle de Louis XIV_,
as has been done, for example, by Philippson. And if I set to work to
examine and rethink the work of Niebuhr in respect to its particular
material, I shall be a new historian of Rome, a Mommsen or (to quote
the most recent writers) a Hector Pais or a Gaetano de Sanctis. But is
this what is desired? Certainly not. But if this be not desired, if the
particular materials of those histories are not to be taken account of,
what else remains save the 'way' in which they have been conceived, the
'mental form' by means of which they construct their narratives, and
therefore their theory and their historical 'thought'?

Now, if this truth be admitted (and I do not see how it can be
contested) it is not possible to reject an ulterior consequence which,
although it is wont to arouse in some the sensation of a paradox,
does not do so in us, for we find it altogether in accordance with
the conception of the identity of history with, philosophy that we
have defended. Is a thought that is not thought conceivable? Is it
permissible to distinguish between the _thought of the historian_ and
the _thought of the philosopher_? Are there perhaps two different
thoughts in the world? To persist in maintaining that the thought of
the historian thinks the fact and not the theory is prevented by the
preceding admission, if by nothing else: that the historian always
thinks at least both the theory of history and the historical fact. But
this admission entails his thinking the theory of all the things that
he narrates, together with the theory of history. And indeed he could
not narrate without understanding them. Fueter extols the merit of
Winckelmann, who was the first to conceive a history, not of artists,
but of art, of a pure spiritual activity, and that of Giannone, who
was the first to attempt a history of the life of jurisprudence. But
these writers made the progress they did because they had a new
and more accurate conception of art and of rights, and if they went
wrong as to certain points, that is because they did not always think
those conceptions with equal exactitude. Winckelmann, for instance,
materialized the spiritual activity of the artist when he posited an
abstract, fixed material ideal of beauty, and gave an abstract history
of artistic styles without regard to the temperaments, historical
circumstances, and individualities of the artists themselves. Giannone
failed to supersede the dualism of Church and State. Without indulging
in other too particular examples, it is evident at the first glance
that ancient historiography concords with the ancient conception of
religion of the state, of ethic, and of the whole of reality; the
medieval with Christian theology and ethic; that of the first half of
the nineteenth century with the idealistic and romantic philosophy,
that of the second half with naturalistic and positivistic philosophy.
Thus, _ex parte historicorum_, there is no way of distinguishing
historical and philosophical thought, which are perfectly commingled in
the narratives. But there is also no possibility of maintaining such
a distinction _ex parte philosophorum_ either, because, as all know,
or at least say, each period has the philosophy proper to it, which
is the consciousness of that period, and as such is its history, at
least in germ; or, as we have put it, philosophy and history coincide.
And if they coincide, the history of philosophy and the history of
historiography also coincide: the one is not only not distinguishable
from the other, but is not even subordinate to the other, for it is all
one with it.

The historiography of philosophy has already begun to open its arms,
inviting and receiving the works of the historians. Every day it
understands better that a history of Greek thought is not complete
without taking count of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius, nor of
Roman thought without Livy and Tacitus, nor of the thought of the
Renaissance without Machiavelli and Guicciardini. It must open them yet
wider and clasp to its bosom even the humble medieval historiographers
who noted the _Gesta episcoporum_ or _Historiolæ translationum_ or Vitæ
sanctorum, or who bear witness to the Christian faith, according to
their powers and in their own way, it is true, but not less than the
great Augustine according to his powers. It must receive not only the
hagiographical writers, but even obtuse philologists or sociologists
who have amused us during the last decades and bear witness to the
creed of positivism not other-wise than as Spencer or Haeckel in their
systems. By means of this amplification of concepts and enrichment of
material, the historiography of philosophy will place itself in the
position of being able to show that philosophy is a force diffused
throughout life, and not the particular invention and cult of certain
men who are philosophers, and will obtain the means that have hitherto
been lacking to effect a close conjunction with the whole historical
movement.

In its turn the history of historiography will gain by the fusion,
because it will find its own directive principles in philosophy, and by
its means will be rendered capable of understanding both the problems
of history in general and those of its various aspects as history of
art and of philosophy, of economic and moral life. To seek elsewhere
the criterion of explanation is vain. Fueter, who takes a glance at
the most recent historiography, that posterior to 1870, at the end of
his book, discerns in it the new consciousness that gives the highest
place to political and military power and marks the end of the old
liberalism, the strengthening of such consciousness by means of the
Darwinian theories concerning the struggle for life, the influence of
a more intense economical and industrial life and a greater intensity
of world politics, the repercussion of Egyptian and Orientalistic
discoveries, which have aided in disproving the illusion of Europe as
the centre of the world, the attraction exercised by the theory of
races, and so on. These observations are just, but they do not reach
the heart and brain of the most recent historiography; they merely
revolve round its body. The heart or brain is, as I have observed,
naturalism, the ideal of historical culture inspired and to be inspired
by the natural sciences. So true is this that Fueter himself burns a
few grains of incense before this idol, sighing for a form of history
that shall be beautiful with the beauty of a well-made machine,
rivalling a book on physics such as the _Theory of Tones_ of Helmholtz.
The truth is that the ideal of the natural sciences, instead of being
the perfection, is one of the many crises that historical thought has
passed through and will pass through. Historical thought is dialectic
of development, and not by any means a deterministic explanation by
means of causes which does not explain anything because it does not
develop anything. But whatever we may think of this, it is certain that
naturalism--that is, the criticism of naturalism--can alone supply the
clue for unravelling the web of the historiography of the last ten
years; the same events and historical movements enumerated above have
acted in the particular way in which they have acted owing to being
constantly framed in naturalistic thought.

For the rest, nothing forbids, and it may even serve a useful purpose,
that the history of philosophy and the history of historiography
should receive literary treatment in different books, for altogether
practical reasons, such, for instance, as the abundance of material and
the different training and acquirements needed for the treatment of the
different classes of material. But what is _apparently disunited_ by
practice thought _really_ unifies; and this real unification is what
I have wished to inculcate, without the pedantic idea ever passing
through my mind of dictating rules for composing books, as to which
it is desirable to leave all liberty of inclusion and exclusion to
writers, in conformity with their various intentions.


[1] _Charakteristik der antiken Historiographie_ (Berlin, 1833).

[2] _Geschichte der neueren Historiographie_ (München u. Berlin,
Oldenburg, 1911).

[3] _Geschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst seit der
Wiederherstellung der literarischen Cultur in Europa_ (Göttingen,
1812-20).




II


GRÆCO-ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY


After what we have said as to the nature of periodization,[1] the
usual custom, to which I too bow here, of beginning the history of
historiography with that of the Greeks, and with the Greeks of the
fifth or sixth century before Christ, will be taken for what it is
really worth, but it must not be thought that we thus intend to
announce the beginning of historiography, its first appearance in the
world, when, on the contrary, all we wish to say is that our interest
in the investigation of its course becomes more vivid at that point.
History, like philosophy, has no historical beginning, but only an
ideal or metaphysical beginning, in so far as it is an activity of
thought, which is outside time. Historically speaking, it is quite
clear that prior to Herodotus, prior to the logographs, prior indeed
to Hesiod and to Homer, history was already, because it is impossible
to conceive of men who do not think and do not narrate their deeds in
some way or other. This explanation might seem to be superfluous if the
confusion between historical beginning and ideal beginning had not led
to the fancy of a 'first philosophical step,' made by Thales or Zeno,
or by somebody else, by means of which thinking the first stone is
supposed to have been laid, as it was believed that by thinking another
last step the pinnacle of the edifice of philosophy was or would be
attained. But Thales and Herodotus should really be called rather the
'sons' of our interest in the development of those disciplines than
the 'fathers' of philosophy and history, and it is we whom those sons
salute as their 'fathers.' We have not usually much interest in what
occurred prior to them or among people more distant than they from
our point of view, not only because there is a scarcity of surviving
documents concerning them, but above all because they are forms of
thought which have but little connexion with our own actual problems.

From its point of view, too, the distinction that we laid down between
history and philology suggests refraining from the search hitherto
made for the beginnings of Græco-Roman historiography by means of
composing lists of magistrates and of adding to these brief mention
of wars, treatises, embassies from colonies, religious festivities,
earthquakes, inundations, and the like, in the ῷροι and in the _annales
pontificum,_ in archives and museums made in temples, or indeed in the
chronological nails fixed to the walls, spoken of by Perizonius. Such
things are extrinsic to historiography and form the precedent, not of
it, but of chronicle and philology, which were not born for the first
time in the nineteenth or seventeenth century, or at any rate during
the Alexandrine period, but belong to all times, for in all times men
take note of what they remember and attempt to preserve such memorials
intact, to restore and to increase them. The precedent of history
cannot be something different from history, but is history itself, as
philosophy is the precedent of philosophy and the living of the living.
Nevertheless the thought of Herodotus and of the logographs really
does unite itself with religions, myths, theogonies, cosmogonies,
genealogies, and with legendary and epical tales, which were not
indeed poetry, or were not only poetry but also thoughts--that is to
say, metaphysics and histories. The whole of later historiography
developed from them by a dialectical process, for which they supplied
the presuppositions--that is to say, concepts, propositions of fact and
fancy mingled, and with that the stimulus better to seek out the truth
and to dissipate fancies. This dissipation took place more rapidly at
the time which it is usual to fix by convention as the beginning of
Greek historiography.

At that time thought deserts mythological history and its ruder
form, prodigious or miraculous history, and enters earthly or human
history--that is to say, the general conception that is still ours, so
much so that it has been possible for an illustrious living historian
to propose the works of Thucydides as an example and model to the
historians of our times. Certainly that exit and that entrance did
not represent for the Greeks a complete breaking with the past; and
since earthly history could not have been altogether wanting in the
past, so it is not to be believed that the Greeks from the sixth and
seventh centuries onward should have abandoned all faith in mythology
and prodigies. These things persisted not only with the people and
among lesser or vulgar historiographers, but also left their traces
among some of the greatest. Nevertheless, looking at the whole from
above, as one should look at it, it is evident that the environment
is altogether changed from what it was. Even the many fables that we
read in Herodotus, and which were to be read in the logographs, are
rarely (as has been justly observed) put forward ingenuously, but are
usually given as by one who collects what others believe, and does
not for that reason accept those beliefs, even if he does not openly
evince his disbelief; or he collects them because he does not know
what to substitute for them, and rather as matter for reflection
and inquiry: _quæ nec confirmare argumentis neque refellere in animo
est,_ as Tacitus says, when he recounts the fables of the Germans:
_plura transcribo quam credo,_ declared Quintus Curtius. Herodotus is
certainly not Voltaire, nor is he indeed Thucydides (Thucydides, 'the
atheist'); but certainly he is no longer Homer or Hesiod.

The following are a few examples of leading problems which ancient
historians had before them, dictated by the conditions and events
of Greek and Roman life; they were treated from a mental point of
view, which no longer found in those facts episodes of the rivalry of
Aphrodite and Hera (as formerly in the Trojan War), but varying complex
human struggles, due to human interests, expressing themselves in human
actions. How did the wars between the Greeks and the Persians originate
and develop? What were the origins of the Peloponnesian War? of the
expedition of Cyrus against Artaxerxes? How was the Roman power formed
in Latium, and how did it afterward extend in Italy and in the whole
world? How did the Romans succeed in depriving the Carthaginians of the
hegemony of the Mediterranean? What were the political institutions
developed in Athens, Rome, and Sparta, and what form did the social
struggle take in those cities? What did the Athenian _demos,_ the Roman
_plebs,_ the _eupatrides,_ and the _patres_ desire? What were the
virtues, the dispositions, the points of view, of the various peoples
which entered into conflict among themselves, Athenians, Lacedemonians,
Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Gauls, and Germans? What were the
characters of the great men who guided the destinies of the peoples,
Themistocles, Pericles, Alexander, Hannibal, and Scipio? These problems
were solved in a series of classical works by Thucydides, Xenophon,
Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, etc., and they will certainly not be blamed
for failing to exhaust their themes--that is, for failing to sound the
bottom of the universe, because there is no sounding the bottom of the
universe--nor because they solve those problems only in the terms in
which they had proposed them, neither more nor less than as we solve
the problems of our day in our own terms. Nor must we forget that since
modern historiography is still much as it was left by the Greeks, the
greater part of those events are still thought as they were by the
ancients, and although something has been added and a different light
illumines the whole, the work of the ancient historians is preserved in
our own: a true "eternal possession," as Thucydides intended that his
history should be.

And just as historical thought had become invigorated in its passage
from the mythological to the human stage, so did research and philology
grow. Herodotus was already travelling, asking questions, and listening
to answers, distinguishing between the things that he had seen
with his own eyes and those which depended upon hearsay, opinion,
and conjecture; Thucydides was submitting to criticism different
traditions relating to the same fact, and even inserting documents in
his narrative. Later appeared legions of learned men and critics, who
compiled 'antiquities' and 'libraries,' and busied themselves also with
the reading of texts, with chronology and geography, thus affording
great assistance to historical studies. Such a fervour of philological
studies was eventually attained that it was recognized as necessary to
draw a clear distinction between the 'histories of antiquaries' (of
which a considerable number survive either entire or in fragments)
and 'histories of historians,' and Polybius several times said that it
is easy to compose history from books, because it suffices to take up
one's residence in a city where there exist rich libraries, but that
true history requires acquaintance with political and military affairs
and direct knowledge of places and of people; and Lucian repeated
that it is indispensable for the historian to have political sense,
άδίδακτον φυσέως δῶρον, a gift of nature not to be learned (the maxims
and practices praised as quite novel by Möser and Niebuhr are therefore
by no means new). The fact is that a more profound theoretical
consciousness corresponded with a more vigorous historiography, so
inseparable is the theory of history from history, advancing with it.
It was also known that history should not be made a simple instrument
of practice, of political intrigue, or of amusement, and that its
function is above all to aim at truth: _ne quid falsi dicere audeat,
ne quid veri non audeat._ In consequence of this, partisanship, even
for one's own country, was condemned (although it was recognized
chat solicitude and sympathy were permissible); and _quidquid Græcia
mendax audet in historia_ was blamed. It was known that history is not
chronicle (annales), which is limited to external things, recording (in
the words of Asellio, the ancient Roman historian) _quod factum, quoque
anno gestum sit,_ whereas history tries to understand _quo Consilio,
quaque ratione gesta sint._ And it was also known that history cannot
set herself the same task as poetry. We find Thucydides referring with
disdain to histories written with the object of gaining the prize in
oratorical competitions, and to those which indulge in fables to please
the vulgar. Polybius too inveighed against those who seek to emphasize
moving details, and depict women dishevelled and in tears, and
dreadful scenes, as though composing tragedies and as though it were
their business to create the marvellous and pleasing and not impart
truth and instruction. If it be a fact that rhetorical historiography
(a worsening of the imaginative and poetic) abounded in antiquity and
introduced its false gold even into some masterpieces, the general
tendency of the better historians was to set themselves free of ornate
rhetoricians and of cheap eloquence. But the ancient historians will
never fail of lofty poetical power and elevation for this reason (not
even the 'prosaic' Polybius, who sometimes paints most effective
pictures), but will ever retain what is proper to lofty historical
narrative. Cicero and Quintilian, Diogenes and Lucian, all recognize
that history must adopt _verba ferme poetarum,_ that it is _proxima
poetis et quodammodo carmen solutum,_ that _scribitur ad narrandum,
non ad demonstrandum,_ that ἔχει τι ποιητικόν, and the like. What the
best historians and theorists sought at that time was not the aridity
and dryness of mathematical or physical treatment (such as we often
hear desired in our day), but gravity, abstention from fabulous and
pleasing tales, or if not from fabulous then from frivolous tales, in
fact from competition with the rhetoricians and composers of histories
that were romances or gross caricatures of such. Above all they desired
that history should remain faithful to real life, since it is the
instrument of life, and a form of knowledge useful to the statesman and
to the lover of his country, and by no means docile to the capricious
requirements of the unoccupied seeking amusement.

This theory of historiography, which may be found here and there in
a good many special treatises and in general treatises on the art of
speech, finds nowhere such complete and conscious expression as in the
frequent polemical interludes of Polybius in his _Histories,_ where
the polemic itself endows it with precision, concreteness, and savour.
Polybius is the Aristotle of ancient historiography: an Aristotle who
is both historical and theoretical, completing the Stagirite, who in
the vast expanse of his work had taken but little interest in history
properly so called. And since so great a part of the ancient narratives
lives in our own, so there is not one of the propositions recorded
that has not been included and has not been worthy of being included
in our treatises. And if, for example, the maxim that history should
be narrated by men of the world and not by the simply erudite or by
philologists, that it is born of practice and assists in practice,
has been often neglected, the blame falls on those who neglect it. A
further blunder committed by such writers has been to forget completely
the τι ποιητικόν and to pay court to an ideal of history something like
an anatomical map or a treatise of mechanics.

But the defect that ancient historiography exposes to our gaze is of
another sort. The ancients did not observe it as a defect, or only
sometimes, in a vague and fugitive manner, without attaching weight to
it, for otherwise they would have remedied it when it occurred. The
modern spirit inquires how the sentiments and conceptions which are now
our ideal patrimony, and the institutions in which they are realized,
have been gradually formed. It wishes to understand the revolutionary
passages from primitive and Oriental to Græco-Roman culture, how
modern ethic was attained through ancient ethic, the modern through
the ancient state, the vast industry and international commerce of
the modern world through the ancient mode of economic production,
the passage from the myths of the Aryans to our philosophies, from
Mycenean to French or Swedish or Italian art of the twentieth century.
Hence there are special histories of culture, of philosophy, of poetry,
of the sciences, of technique, of economy, of morality, of religions,
and so on, which are preferred to histories of individuals or of
states themselves, in so far as they are abstract individuals. They
are illuminated and inspired throughout with the ideas of liberty, of
civilization, of humanity, and of progress. All this is not to be found
in ancient historiography, although it cannot be said to be altogether
absent, for with what could the mind of man have ever been occupied,
save by human ideals or 'values'? Nor should the error be made of
considering 'epochs' as something compact and static, whereas they are
various and in motion, or of rendering those divisions natural and
external which, as has been demonstrated, are nothing but the movement
of our thought as we think history, a fallacy linked with the other one
concerning the absolute beginning of history and the rendering temporal
of the forms of the spirit. Whoever is gifted with the patience of
the collector will meet here and there with suggestions and buddings
of those historiographical conceptions of which, generally speaking,
we have denied the existence in the writings of the ancients. He who
finds diversion in modernizing the old may travesty the thoughts of
the ancients, as they have been travestied, so as to render them
almost altogether similar to those of the moderns. In the first book
of Aristotle's _Metaphysics_, for instance, is to be admired a sketch
of the development of Greek philosophy, of the various naturalistic
interpretations which have been in turn proposed for the explanation
of the cosmos, and so on, up to the new orientation of the mind, when,
"compelled by truth itself," it turned toward a different order of
principles--that is to say, till the time of Anaxagoras, "who seems
to be a sober man among the intoxicated," thus continuing up to the
time of Socrates, who founded ethic and discovered the universal and
the definition. A sketch of the history of civilization is to be found
at the beginning of the _History_ of Thucydides, and Polybius will be
found discoursing of the progress that had been made in all the arts,
while Cicero, Quintilian, and several others trace the progress of
rights and of literature. There are also touches of human value in
conflict with one another in the narratives of the struggles between
Greeks and barbarians, between the truly civil and active life of
the former and the proud, lazy habits of the latter. Other similar
conceptions of human values will be found in many comparisons of
peoples, and above all in the way that Tacitus describes the Germans
as a new moral power rising up against that of ancient Rome, and
perhaps also in the repugnance which the same historian experiences
at seeing before him the Jews, who follow rites _contrarius ceteris
mortalibus._ Finally, Rome, mistress of the world, will sometimes
assume in our eyes the aspect of a transparent symbol of the human
ideal, analogous to Roman law, gradually idealized in the form of
natural law. But here it is rather a question of symbols than of
conceptions, of our own conclusions than of the thoughts proper to the
ancients. When, for instance, we examine the history of philosophy
of Aristotle as outlined by him, we find that it consists above all
in a rapid critical account to serve as propædeutic to his system;
and literary and artistic histories and histories of civilization
seem often to be weakened by the prejudice that these are not really
necessary mental forms, but luxuries and refinements. At the utmost
we can speak of exceptions, incidents, tentatives; which does not in
any way alter the comprehensive impression and general conclusion to
the effect that the ancients never possessed explicit histories of
civilization, philosophy, religions, literature, art, or rights: none,
in fact, of the many possessed by ourselves. Nor did they possess
'biography' in the sense that we do, as the history of the ideal
function of an individual in his own time and in the life of humanity,
nor the sense of development, and when they speak of primitive times
they rarely feel that they are primitive, but are rather disposed to
transfigure them poetically, in the same way that Dante did by the
mouth of Cacciaguida that Fiorenza which "stood soberly and modestly at
peace" within the circle of the ancient days. It was one of the "severe
labours" of our Vico to recover the crude reality of history beneath
these poetic idylls. In this work he was assisted, not by the ancient
historiographers, but by documents and mostly by languages.

The physiognomy of the histories of the ancients as described very
accurately reflects the character of their philosophy, which never
attained to the conception of the spirit, and therefore also failed
to attain to that of humanity, liberty, and progress, which are
aspects or synonyms of the former. It certainly passed from physiology
or cosmology to ethic, logic, and rhetoric; but it schematized and
materialized these spiritual disciplines because it treated them
empirically. Thus their ethic did not rise above the custom of
Greece and Rome, nor their logic above abstract forms of reasoning
and discussing, nor their poetic above classes of literature. For
this reason all assume the form of precepts. 'Anti-historical
philosophy' has been universally recognized and described, but it
is anti-historical because anti-spiritual, anti-historical because
naturalistic. The ancients also failed to notice the deficiency
observed by us, for they were entirely occupied with the joy of the
effort of passing from myth to science and thus to the collection and
classification of the facts of reality. That is to say, they were
engrossed upon the sole problem which they set themselves to solve,
and solved so successfully that they supplied naturalism with the
instruments which it still employs: formal logic, grammar, the doctrine
of the virtues, the doctrine of literary classes, categories of civil
rights, and so forth. These were all Græco-Roman creations.

But that ancient historians and philosophers were not explicitly aware
of the above defect in its proper terms, or rather in our modern terms,
does not mean that they were not to some extent exercised by it. In
every historical period exist problems theoretically formulated and for
that very reason solved, while others have not yet arrived at complete
theoretical maturity, but are seen, intuited, though not yet adequately
thought. If the former are the positive contribution of that time to
the chain whose links form the human spirit, the latter represent an
unsatisfied demand, which binds that time in another way to the coming
time. The great attention paid to the negative aspect of every epoch
sometimes leads to the forgetting of the other aspect, and to the
consequent imagining of a humanity that passes not from satisfaction
to satisfaction through dissatisfaction, but from dissatisfaction
to dissatisfaction and from error to error. But obscurities and
discordances are possible in so far as light and concord have been
previously attained. Thus they represent in their way progress, as is
to be seen from the history that we are recounting, where we find them
very numerous for the very reason that the age of mythologies and of
prodigies has been left behind. If Greece and Rome had not been both
more than Greece and more than Rome, if they had not been the human
spirit, which is infinitely greater than any Greece and any Rome--its
transitory individuations--they would have been satisfied with the
human portraits of their historians and would not have sought beyond.
But they did seek beyond--that is to say, those very historians and
philosophers sought; and since they had before them so many episodes
and dramas of human life, reconstructed by their thought, they asked
themselves what was the cause of those events, reasonably concluding
that such a cause might be one fact or another, a particular fact; and
for this reason they began to distinguish between facts and causes,
and, in the order of causes themselves, between cause and occasion,
as does Thucydides, or between beginning, cause, and occasion ἀρχή,
αἰτία, πρόφασις, like Polybius. They thus became involved in disputes
as to the true cause of this or that event, and ever since antiquity
attempts have been made to solve the enigma of the 'greatness' of
Rome, assuming in modern times the guise of a solemn experimentum of
historical thought and thus forming the diversion of those historians
who linger behind. The question was often generalized in the other
question as to the motive power behind all history; and here too appear
doctrines, afterward drawn out to great length, such as that the form
of the political constitution was the cause of all the rest, and that
other doctrine relating to climate and to the temperaments of peoples.
The doctrine principally proposed and accepted was that of the natural
law of the circle in human affairs, the perpetual alternation of
good and evil, or the passage through political forms, which always
returns to the form from which it has taken its start, or as growth
from infancy to manhood, declining into old age and decrepitude and
ending in death. But a law of this sort, which satisfied and still
satisfies the Oriental mind, did not satisfy the classical mind,
which had a lively sense of human effort and of the stimulus received
from obstacles encountered and conflicts endured. Hence therefore the
further questions: Does fate or immutable necessity oppress man, or is
he not rather the plaything of capricious fortune, or is he ruled by a
wise and sagacious providence? It was also asked whether the gods are
interested in human affairs or not. These questions met with answers
that are sometimes pious, advocating submission to the divine will and
wisdom, sometimes, again, inspired with the notion that the gods are
not concerned with human affairs themselves, but solely with vengeance
and punishment. All these conceptions lack firmness, and are for the
most part confused, since a general uncertainty and confession of
ignorance prevails in them: _in incerto judicium est,_ said Tacitus,
almost summing up the ancient argument on the subject in this epigram,
or rather finding non-thought, failure to understand, to be the result
of the argument.

What we do not understand we do not dominate; on the contrary, it
dominates us, or at least menaces us, taking the form of evil; hence
the psychological attitude of the ancients toward history must be
described as pessimistic. They saw much greatness fall, but they never
discovered the greatness that does not fall and that rises up greater
after every fall. For this reason a flood of bitterness inundates
their histories. Happiness, beauty of human life, always seemed to be
something that had been and was no longer, and were it present would
have soon been lost. For the Romans and those professing the cult of
Rome, it was primitive, austere, victorious Rome; and all the Roman
historians, big and little, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, Paterculus and
Florus, fix their gaze upon that image, as they lament the corruption
of later days. Once it was Rome that trampled the world underfoot;
but they knew that the triumphant queen must some day become slave
from queen that once she was. This thought manifests itself in the
most various forms, from the melancholy meditations of Scipio upon the
ruins of Carthage to the fearful expectation of the lordship which--as
Persia to Babylonia and Macedonia to Persia--must succeed to that of
the Romans (the theory of the 'four monarchies' has its origin in the
Græco-Roman world, whence it filtered into Palestine and into the
Book of Daniel). Sometimes repressed, sometimes outspoken, we hear
the anxious question: Who will be the successor and the gravedigger?
Will it be the menacing Parthian? Will it be the Germans, so rich in
new and mysterious energy?--all this, despite the proud consciousness
of ancient times that had uttered the words "Rome, the eternal city."
Certainly, that general pessimism is not altogether coherent, for no
pessimism can be so altogether, and here and there appear fugitive
hints of a perception of human progress in this or that part of life.
We find, for instance, Tacitus, bitterest of men, remarking that _nec
omnia apud priores meliora, sed nostra quoque ætas multa laudis et
artium imitanda tulit,_ and one of the speakers in the _De oratoribus_
observes that literary forms change with the times and that it is
owing to the _vitio malignitatis humana_ that we hear the perpetual
praise of ancient things and the perpetual abuse of things modern.
Another interlocutor in the same dialogue draws attention to the
dialectic connexion between the turbulence of life and the greatness of
art, whence Rome _donec erravit, donec se partibus et dissensionibus
confecit,_ precisely at that time _tulit valentiorem eloquentiam._
This linking together of good and evil is not altogether absent in
ancient philosophy, and is also to be found here and there in ancient
historiography. Sallust, for example, is of opinion that Rome remained
in good health so long as she had Carthage opposed to her and giving
her trouble. Readers of Cicero and of Seneca will be aware that the
idea of humanity also made considerable progress during the last
days of the Republic and the first days of the Empire, owing to the
influence of Stoicism. Divine providence too is courted, as was not
formerly the case, and we also find Diodorus Siculus undertaking to
treat the affairs of all nations as those of a single city (καθάπερ
μιᾶς πολέως). But these promises remain still weak, vague, and inert
(the _promissor_ Diodorus, for example, carried out none of his
grandiose prologue), and in any case they foretell the dissolution
of the classical world. During this epoch the problem as to the
signification of history remains unsolved, because the contradictory
conceptions above mentioned of fortune or of the gods, the belief in
a universal worsening of things, in a fall or a regression, which had
already been expressed in many ancient myths, were not by any means
solutions.

Owing to their failure to realize spiritual value as the immanent
progressive force in history, even the loftiest of the ancient
historians were not able to maintain the unity and autonomy of
historiographical work, which in other respects they had discovered
and asserted. Although they had penetrated the deception exercised by
those histories that are really poetry, or lies and partisanship, or
collections of material and unintelligent piling up of erudition, or
instruments of pleasure, affording marvel for simple folk, yet they
were on the other hand incapable of ever setting themselves free of
the preconception of history as directed to an end of edification
and chiefly of instruction. This real heteronomy then appeared to
be autonomy. They are all agreed as to this: Thucydides proposed to
narrate past events in order to predict from them future events,
identical or similar, the perpetual return of human fortunes; Polybius
sought out the causes of facts in order that he might apply them to
analogous cases, and held those unexpected events to be of inferior
importance whose irregularities place them outside rules; Tacitus, in
conformity with his chief interest, which was rather moralistic than
social or political, held his chief end to be the collection of facts
notable for the vice or virtue which they contained, _ne virtutes
sileantur utque pravis dictis factìsque ex posteritate et infamia metus
sit._ Behind them came all the minor historians, all the hypocrites,
who repeated by imitation or involuntary echo or false unction and in a
superficial way what in the greater writers was the result of profound
thought, as, for instance, the Sallusts, the Diogenes, the Diodori,
the Plutarchs, and those that resemble them. Then there were all the
extractors of historical quintessences, of memorable deeds and words of
statesmen, captains, and philosophers, and even of women (the γυναικῶν
ἀρεταί). Ancient historiography has been called 'pragmatical,' and
such it is, in the double sense of the word, ancient and modern: in so
far as it limits itself to the earthly side of things and especially
to the political (the 'pragmatic' of Polybius), and in so far as it
adorns them with reflections and advice (the 'apodictic' of the same
historian-theorist).

This heteronomous theory of history does not always remain merely
theory, prologue, or frame, but sometimes operates so as to lead to
the mingling of elements that are not historiographical with history,
such as, for instance, is the case with the 'speeches' or 'orations' of
historical personages, not delivered or not in agreement with what was
really said, but invented or arranged by the historian and put into the
mouths of the personages. This, in my opinion, has been wrongly looked
upon as a survival of the 'epic spirit' in ancient historiography, or
as a simple proof of the rhetorical ability of the narrators, because,
if the first explanation hold as to some of the popular writers and the
second as to certain rhetoricians, the origin of those falsifications
was with the greater historians nothing but the fulfilment of the
obligation of teaching and counselling accepted by them. But when such
ends had been assigned to history, its intrinsic quality of truth
and the line of demarcation which it drew between real and imaginary
could not but vacillate to some extent, since the imaginary sometimes
served excellently well and even better than the real for those ends.
And setting aside Plato, who despised all knowledge save that of the
transcendental ideas, did not Aristotle himself ask whether the greater
truth belonged to history or to poetry? Had he not indeed said that
history is 'less philosophical' than poetry? And if so why should not
history have availed itself of the aid of poetry and of imagination?
In any case, resistance could be opposed to this ulterior perversion
by seeking the truth with vigilant eye, and also by reducing the
share of the imaginary speeches and other parerga co the smallest
dimensions. But it was impossible to dispense with belief in the end
of instruction, because it was in any case necessary that history
should have some end, and a true end had not been discovered, and
the end of instruction performed almost the function of a metaphor of
the truth, since it was to some extent the nearest to the truth. In
Polybius critical vigilance, scientific austerity, a keen desire for
ample and severe history, attain to so high a level that one would feel
disposed to treat the historian of Megalopolis like one of those great
pagans that medieval imagination admitted to Paradise, or at least to
Purgatory, as worthy of having known the true God by extraordinary
means and as a reward for their intense moral conscience. But if we
envisage the matter with greater calmness we shall have to consign
Polybius also to the Limbo where those who "were before Christianity"
and "did not duly adore God" are received. They were men of great value
and reached the boundary, even touching it, but they never passed
beyond.


[1] See pp. 112-116.




III


MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY


For the same reason that we must not look upon the beginning of
any history as an absolute beginning, or conceive of epochs in a
simplicistic manner, as though they were strictly limited to the
determinations represented by their general character, we must
be careful not to identify the humanistic conception of history
with the ancient epoch of historiography which it characterizes or
symbolizes--in fact, we must not make historical the ideal categories,
which are eternal. Græco-Roman historiography was without doubt
humanistic, but it was a Græco-Roman humanism--that is to say, it not
only had all the limitations that we have been pointing out, but also
the special physiognomy which such humanism assumes in the ancient
historians and thinkers, varying more or less in each one of them.
Not only was it thus humanistic, but other formations of the same
sort probably preceded, as they certainly followed, it in the course
of the centuries. It is perhaps attractive, but it is also artificial
(and contrary to the true concept of progress), to conceive of the
history of philosophy and of historiography as of a series of ideal
phases, which are traversed once only, and to transform philosophers
into categories and categories into philosophers, making synonymous
Democritus and the atom, Plato and the transcendental idea, Descartes
and dualism, Spinoza and pantheism, Leibnitz and monadism, whittling
down history to the dimensions of a _Dynastengeschichte_, as a German
critic has satirically described it, or treating it according to a
sort of 'line of buckets' theory, as an Englishman has humorously
described it. Hence, too, the view that history has not yet appeared in
the world, or that it has appeared for the first time and by flashes,
in response to the invocations made by the historian and the critic of
the present day. But every thinking of history is always adequate to
the moment at which it appears and always inadequate to the moment that
follows.

The opportuneness of this warning is confirmed by the astonishment of
those who consider the passage from ancient to Christian or medieval
historiography; for what can be the meaning of this passage, in which
we find ourselves faced with a miraculous and mythological world all
over again, identical as it seems, in its general characteristics,
with that of the ancient historians, which has disappeared? It is
certainly not progress, but rather falling into a ditch, into which
also fall all the dearest illusions relating to the perpetual advance
of humanity. And the Middle Ages did seem to be a ditch or a declivity,
sometimes during the period itself and most clearly at the Renaissance,
and this image is still represented in common belief. Restricting
ourselves solely to the domain of historiography, and following up
the impression of astonishment at first caused by it, we end by
representing events at the beginning of the Middle Ages somewhat in the
way they appeared to our writer Adolfo Bartoli, in his introductory
volume to the _History of Italian Literature,_ which is all broken up
with cries of horror and with the gesture of covering the face lest
he should see so much ugliness. "We are in a world," writes Bartoli,
when speaking of Gregory of Tours, "where thought has descended so low
as to cause pity, in a world where a conception of history no longer
exists," and history also becomes "a humble handmaid to theology--that
is to say, an aberration of the spirit." And after Gregory of Tours
(continues Bartoli) there is a further fall: "Behold Fredigarius, in
whom credulity, ignorance, and confusion surpass every limit... there
survives in him nothing of a previous civilization." After Fredigarius,
with the monastic chronicle, we take another step down-ward toward
nothingness, though this would seem to be impossible. Here "we seem to
see the lean monk putting his trembling head out of the narrow window
of his cell every five or eleven years, to make sure that men are not
all dead, and then shutting himself up again in the prison, where he
lives only in the expectation of death." We must protest against such
shrinking back (which makes the critic of to-day look like the "lean
monk" whose appearance he has so vividly portrayed); we must assert
that mythology and miracle and transcendency certainly returned in
the Middle Ages--that is to say, that these ideal categories again
acted with almost equal force and that they almost reassumed their
ancient bulk, but they did not return _historically identical_ with
those of the pre-Hellenic world. We must seek in the heart of their
new manifestations for the effective progress which is certainly
accomplished by Gregory of Tours and Fredigarius, and even by the
monkish chroniclers.

The divinity descends again to mingle anthropomorphically with the
affairs of men, as a most powerful or ultra-powerful personage among
the less powerful; the gods are now the saints, and Peter and Paul
intervene in favour of this or that people; St Mark, St Gregory,
St Andrew, or St January lead the array of the combatants, the one
vying with the other, and sometimes against the other, playing
malicious tricks upon one another; and in the performance or the
non-performance of an act of worship is again placed the loss or gain
of a battle: medieval poems and chronicles are full of such stories.
These conceptions are analogous to the antique, and indeed they are
their historical continuation. This is not only so (as has so often
been pointed out) owing to the attachment of this or that particular
of ancient faith to popular religion and to the transformation of
gods into saints and demons, but also, and above all, to a more
substantial reason. Ancient thought had left fortune, the divinity,
the inscrutable, at the edge of its humanism, with the result that
the prodigious was never completely eliminated even from the most
severe historians--the door at any rate was left open by which it
could return. All are aware with how many 'superstitions' philosophy,
science, history, and customs were impregnated during late antiquity,
which in this respect was not intellectually superior, but indeed
inferior, to the new Christian religion. In the latter the fables
gradually formed and miracles which were believed became spiritualized
and ceased to be 'superstitions'--that is to say, something extraneous
or discordant to the general humanistic conception--and set themselves
in harmony with the new supernaturalistic and transcendental
conception, of which they were the accompaniment. Thus myth and
miracle, becoming intensified in Christianity, became at the same time
different from ancient myths and miracles.

They were different and more lofty, because they contained a more lofty
thought: the thought of spiritual worth, which was not peculiar to this
or to that people, but common to the whole of humanity. The ancients
had indeed touched upon this thought in speculation, but they had never
possessed it, and their philosophers had sought it in vain or attained
to it only in abstract speculation not capable of investing the whole
soul, as is the case with thoughts that are profoundly thought, and
as was the case with Christianity. Paulus Orosius expresses this in
his _Historæ adversus paganos_, in such accents as no Græco-Roman
historian had been able to utter: _Ubique patria, ubique lex et
religio mea est.... Latitudo orientis, septentrionis copiositas,
meridiana diffusio, magnarum insularum largissimæ tutissimæque sedes
mei juris et nominis sunt, quia ad Christianos et Romanos Romanus et
Christianus accedo._ To the virtue of the citizen is added that of man,
of spiritual man, who puts himself on a level with the truth by means
of his religious faith and by his work, which is humanly good. To the
illustrious men among the pagans are opposed illustrious men among the
Christians who are better than illustrious, being saints; and the new
Plutarch is found in the _Vitæ patrum_ or _eremitarum,_ in the lives
of the confessors of Christ, of the martyrs, of the propagators of
the true faith; the new epics describe the conflicts of the faithful
against unbelievers, of Christians against heretics and Islamites.
There is here a greater consciousness of conflict than the Greeks had
of the conflict between Greeks and barbarians, or freedmen and slaves,
which were usually looked upon rather as representing differences of
nature than of spiritual values. _Ecclesiastical history_ now appears,
no longer that of Athens or of Rome, but of religion and of the Church
which represented it in its strifes and in its triumphs--that is to
say, the strifes and triumphs of the truth. This was a thing without
precedent in the ancient world, whose histories of culture, of art
or philosophy, did not go beyond the empirical stage, as we have
seen, whereas ecclesiastical history has a spiritual value as its
subject, by means of which it illuminates and judges facts. To censure
ecclesiastical history because it overrules and oppresses profane
history will perhaps be justified, as we shall see, from certain
points of view and in a certain sense; but it is not justifiable as a
general criticism of the idea of that history, and, indeed, when we
formulate the censure in these terms we are unconsciously pronouncing
a warm eulogy of it. The _historia spiritalis_ (as we may also call
it, employing the title of Avito's poem) could not and in truth would
not consent to be a mere part, or to suffer rivals at its side: it
must dominate and affirm itself as the whole. And since history
becomes history of the truth with Christianity, it abandons at the
same time the fortuitous and chance, to which the ancients had often
abandoned it, and recognizes its own proper law, which is no longer
a natural law, blind fate, or even the influence of the stars (St
Augustine confutes this doctrine of the pagans), but rationality,
intelligence, _providence._ This conception was not unknown to ancient
philosophy, but is now set free from the frost of intellectualism and
abstractionism and becomes warm and fruitful. Providence guides and
disposes the course of events, directing them to an end, permitting
evils as punishments and as instruments of education, determining the
greatness and the catastrophes of empires, in order to prepare the
kingdom of God. This means that for the first time is really broken the
idea of the _circle,_ of the perpetual return of human affairs to their
starting-point, of the vain labour of the Danaïds (St Augustine also
combats the _circuitus_); history for the first time is here understood
_as progress_: a progress that the ancient historians did not succeed
in discovering, save in rare glimpses, thus falling into unconsolable
pessimism, whereas Christian pessimism is irradiated with hope. Hence
the importance to be attributed to the _succession of empires_ and to
the function fulfilled by each of them, and especially with regard
to the Roman Empire, which politically unified the world that Christ
came to unify spiritually, to the position of Judaism as opposed to
Christianity, and the like. These questions have been answered in
various ways, but on the common assumption that divine intelligence
had willed those events, that greatness and that decadence, those joys
and afflictions, and therefore that all had been necessary means of
the divine work, and that all had competed in and were competing in
the final end of history, linked one with the other, not as effects
following from a blind cause, but as stages of a process. Hence, too,
history understood as _universal_ history, no longer in the sense of
Polybius, who narrates the transactions of those states which enter
into relations with one another, but in the profounder sense of a
history of the universal, of the universal by excellence, which is
history in labour with God and toward God. By means of this spirit
which invests them, even the most neglected of the chronicles become
surrounded with a halo, which is wanting to the classical histories of
Greece and Rome, and which, however distant they be from our particular
view-points, yet in their general aspect makes them very near to our
heart and mind.

Such are the new problems and the new solutions which Christianity
brought to historical thought, and it may be said of them, as of the
political and humanistic thought of the ancients, that they constitute
a solid possession of perpetual efficacy for the human spirit. Eusebius
of Cæsarea is to be placed beside Herodotus as 'father' of modern
historiography, however little disposed it may be to recognize its
parents in that barbaric author and in the others who were called
'fathers of the Church,' to whom, and particularly to St Augustine, it
yet owes so great a part of itself. What are our histories of culture,
of civilization, of progress, of humanity, of truth, save the form of
ecclesiastical history in harmony with our times--that is to say, of
the triumph and propagation of the faith, of the strife against the
powers of darkness, of the successive treatments of the new evangel, or
good news, made afresh with each succeeding epoch? Do not the modern
histories, which narrate the function performed or the pre-eminence
assumed by this or that nation in the work of civilization, correspond
to the _Gesta Dei per Francos_ and to other like formulas of medieval
historiography? And our universal histories are such not only in the
sense of Polybius, but also of the universal as ideal, purified and
elevated in the Christian sense; hence the religious sentiment which we
experience on approaching the solemnity of history.

It will be observed that in presenting it in this way we to some extent
idealize the Christian conception; and this is true, but in the same
way and in the same measure as we have idealized ancient humanism,
which was not only humanism, but also transcendency and mystery.
Christian historiography, like ancient historiography, solved the
problems that were set to it, but it did not solve other problems that
were only formed afterward, because they were not set to it. A proof
of this is to be found in the caprices and the myths that accompanied
its fundamental conception. The prodigious and the miraculous, which,
as already observed, surrounded Christian historiography, bore witness
precisely to the incomplete ideality of the new and loftier God,
the thought of whom became converted into a myth, his action into
fabulous anecdotes. Yet when it was not a question of miracles, or when
these were reduced to small compass, attenuated and held back, if not
refuted, there nevertheless remained the miracle of the divinity and
of the truth, conceived as transcendent, separated from and opposed to
human affairs. This too was an attestation of the Christian spirit, in
so far as it surpassed the ancient spirit, not with the calmness and
security of thought, but with the violence of sentiment and with the
enthusiasm of the imagination. Transcendency led to a consideration of
worldly things as external and rebellious to divine things: hence the
dualism of God and the world, of a _civitas colestis_ and of another
that was _terrena,_ of a _civitas_ Dei and of a _civitas diaboli_ which
revived most ancient Oriental conceptions, such as Parseeism, and was
tempered, if not internally corrected, by means of the providential
course of history, internally compromised by that unconquered dualism.
The city of God destroyed the earthly city and took its place, but
did not justify it, although it tried to do so here and there,
in accordance with the logic of its providential and progressive
principle. St Augustine, obliged to explain the reasons of the fortune
of Rome, escaped from the difficulty with the sophism that God conceded
that greatness to the Romans as a reward for their virtues, earthly
though they were and not such as to lead to the attainment of heavenly
glories, but yet worthy the fleeting reward of earthly glory. Thus the
Romans remained always reprobate, but less reprehensible than other
reprobates; there could not have been true virtue where there had not
been true religion. The contests of ideas did not appear as conflicting
forms of the true in its becoming, but simply diabolical suggestions,
which disturbed the truth, which was complete and possessed by the
Church. Eusebius of Cæsarea treated heresies as the work of the
devil, because it was the devil who prompted Simon Magus, and then
Menander, and the two currents of gnosis represented by Saturninus and
Basil. Otto of Frisia contemplated the Roman Empire succeeding to the
Babylonian as son to father, and the kings of the Persians and the
Greeks almost as its tutors and pedagogues. In the political unity of
Rome he discovers a prelude to Christian unity, in order that the minds
of men should form themselves _ad majora intelligenda promptiores et
capaciores,_ be disciplined to the cult of a single man, the emperor,
and to the fear of a single dominant city, that they should learn _unam
quoque fidem tenendam._ But the same Otto imagines the whole world _a
primo homine ad Christum ... exceptis de Israelitico populo paucis,
errore deceptus, vanis superstitionibus deditus, dæmonum ludicris
captus, mundi illecebris irretitus,_ fighting _sub principe mundi
diabolo, until venit plenitudo temporis_ and God sent His son to earth.
The doctrine of salvation as a grace due to the good pleasure of God,
indebita Dei gratia, is not at all an accidental excrescence upon this
conception, but is its foundation or logical complement. Christian
humanity was destined to make itself unhuman, and St Augustine, however
much reverence he excites by the energy of his temperament, by his
gaze ever fixed above, offends us to an equal degree by his lack of
human sympathy, his harshness and cruelty; and the 'grace' of which he
speaks assumes in our eyes the aspect of odious favouritism and undue
exercise of power. It is nevertheless well to remember that by means
of these oscillations and deviations of sentiment and imagination
Christian historiography prepared the problem of the surpassing of
dualism. For if the search for the Christianity of the non-Christians,
for grace due to all men from their very character of men, the truth
of heresies, the goodness of pagan virtue, was a historical task that
has matured slowly in modern times, the division and opposition of
the two histories and the two cities, introduced by Christianity, was
a fundamental necessity, as their unity thought in the providential
divine Unity was a good preparation for it.

Another well-known aspect of this dualism is _dogmatism,_ the
incapacity to understand the concrete particularization of itself by
the spirit in its various activities and forms. This explains the
accusation levelled against ecclesiastical history of overriding and
tyrannically oppressing the whole of the rest of history. This did in
fact take place, because ecclesiastical history, instead of developing
itself in the concrete universal of the spirit, remained rooted in a
particular determination of it. All human values were reduced to a
single value--that is to say, to firmness of Christian faith and to
service of the Church. This value, thus abstractly conceived, became
deprived of its natural virtue and declined to the level of a material
and immobile fact, and indeed the vivid, fluid Christian consciousness
after some centuries of development became solidified in dogmas. That
materialized and motionless dogma necessarily prevailed as a universal
measure, and men of all times were judged according to whether they had
or had not been touched with the divine grace, were pious or impious,
and the lives of the holy fathers and of believers were a Plutarch,
who excluded every other profane Plutarch. This was the dogmatism of
transcendency, which therefore resolved itself into _asceticism,_ in
the name of which the whole actual history of mankind is covered with
contempt, with horror, and with lamentation. This is particularly
noticeable in Augustine, in Orosius, and in Otto of Frisia, but is to
be perceived at least in germ as a tendency among all the historians or
chroniclers of the early Middle Ages. What thoughts are suggested by
the battle of Thermopylæ to Otto of Frisia? _Tædet hic inextricabilem
malorum texere cratem; tamen ad ostendendam mortalium miseriam,
summatim ea attingere volo._ And what by the deeds of Alexander?_
Regni Macedonum monarchia, quæ al ipso cœpit, ipso mortuo cum ipso
finitur.... Civitas autem Christi firmata supra firmam petram_.... With
asceticism is linked the often noted and often ridiculed credulity
of the medieval historians (not to be confounded with the belief in
miracles, originating from religion): this credulity is generally
attributed to the prevalence of imagination, or to social conditions,
which rendered books rare and critical capacity difficult to find--that
is to say, to things which required to be explained in their turn.

Indifference is, indeed, one of the principal sources of credulity,
because no one is ever credulous in the things that touch him closely
and of which he treats, while on the other hand all (as is proved
in daily life) are ready to lend an ear to more or less indifferent
talk. Asceticism, diminishing the interest for things of the world
and for history, assisted in the neglect and dispersion of books
and documents, promoted credulity toward everything heard or read,
unbridling the imagination, ever desirous of the wonderful and
curious, to the disadvantage of discernment. It did this not only
in history properly so called, but also in the science of nature or
natural history, which was also indifferent to one, who possessed the
ultimate truth of religion. The weak capacity for individualization
noticeable in medieval historiography must be attributed to ascetism,
which is usually satisfied with the general character of goodness
or badness (the 'portrait' is very rare in it, as in the figurative
arts of the same age), and it has even less consciousness of the
historical differences of place and time, travestying persons and
events in contemporary costume. It even goes so far as to compose
imaginary histories and false documents, which portray the supposed
type. This extends from Agnello of Ravenna, who declared that he wrote
also the lives of those bishops of Ravenna about whom he possessed no
information, _et credo_ (he said) _non mentitum esse,_ because, if
they filled so high a past, they must of necessity have been good,
charitable, zealous, and so forth, down to the false decretals of the
pseudo-Isidore. We also owe to asceticism the _form of chronicle_ as
its intimate cause, because, when the meaning of particular facts
was neglected, it only remained to note them as they were observed
or related, without any ideological connexion and with only the
chronological connexion. Thus we frequently find among the historians
of the Middle Ages the union (at first sight strange, yet not without
logical coherence) of a grandiose history, beginning with the creation
of the world and the dispersion of the races, and an arid chronicle,
following the other principle and becoming ever more particular and
more contingent as approach is gradually made to the times of the
authors.

When on the one hand the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, and
on the other the transcendency of the principle of explanation had
been conceived, the composition of dualism could not be sought for in
intelligence, but in myth, which put an end to the strife with the
triumph of one of the two adversaries: the myth of the fall, of the
redemption, of the expected reign of Christ, of the Last Judgment, and
of the final separation of the two cities, one ascending to Paradise
with the elect, the other driven back into hell with the wicked. This
mythology had its precedent in the Judaic expectations of a Messiah,
and also, from some points of view, in Orphism, and continued to
develop through gnosis, millenarism, and other heretical tentatives
and heresies, until it took a definite or almost a definite form in
St Augustine. It has been remarked that in this conception metaphysic
became identified with history, as an entirely new thought, altogether
opposed to Greek thought, and that it is a philosophical contribution
altogether novel and proper to Christianity. But we must add here that,
as mythology, it did not unite, but indeed confounded, metaphysic and
history, making the finite infinite, avoiding the fallacy of the circle
as perpetual return of things, but falling into the other fallacy of a
progress beginning and ending in time. History was therefore arranged
in spiritual epochs or phases, through which humanity was born, grew
up, and attained completion: there were six, seven, or eight epochs,
according to the various ways of dividing and calculating, which
sometimes corresponded to the ages of human life, sometimes to the days
of the creation, sometimes to both these schemes combined; or where
the hermeneutic of St Jerome upon the Book of Daniel was accepted,
the succession of events was distributed among the four _monarchies,_
of which the last was the Roman, not only in order of time, but also
in that of the idea, because after the Roman Empire (the Middle Ages,
as we know, long nourished the illusion that that empire persisted in
the form of the Holy Roman Empire) there would be nothing else, and
the reign of Christ or of the Church and then of Antichrist and the
universal judgment were expected to follow without any intermission.
The end which history had not yet reached chronologically, being also
intrinsic to the system, was ideally constructible, as the Apocalypses
had already ideally constructed it, pervading theological works and
even histories, which in their last section (see the works of Otto of
Frisia for all of them) described the coming of Antichrist and the end
of the world: hence the idea of a _history of things future,_ continued
by the paradoxical Francesco Patrizzi, who gave utterance to his theory
in the sixteenth century in his dialogues _Upon History_ (1560). This
general historical picture might be here and there varied in its
particulars, but never shattered and confuted; it varied in orthodoxy
up to the time of Augustine, and afterward among the dissentients and
the heretics: most noteworthy of these variations was the _Eternal
Evangel_ of the followers of Gioacchino di Flora, who divided history
into three epochs, corresponding to the three persons of the Trinity:
the first that of the Old Testament or of the Father, the second
that of the New Testament or of the Son, the third and last, that of
the Spirit. These are but artificial combinations and transactions,
by means of which life always seeks to find a passage between the
preconceived schemes which compress and threaten to suffocate it.

But such transactions did not avail to get the better of the discord
between reality and plan which everywhere revealed itself. Hence the
necessity of the _allegorical interpretation,_ so dear to the Middle
Ages. This consisted substantially in placing an imaginary figure
between the plan and the historical reality, a mixture of both, like a
bridge, but a bridge which could be crossed only in imagination. Thus
personages and events of sacred and profane history were allegorized,
and subtle numerical calculations made and continually reinforced with
new imaginary contributions, in order to discover correspondences
and parallelisms; and not only were the ages of life and the days of
creation placed on a parallel line with historical epochs, but so
also were the virtues and other conceptions. Such notions are still
to be found in books of devotion and in the preaching of the less
acute and less modernized of sacred orators. The 'reign of nature'
was also included in allegorical interpretation; and since history
and metaphysic had been set at variance with one another, so in like
manner was natural science set at variance with both of them, and all
appeared together in allegorical forms in the medieval encyclopædias,
the _Pantheons_ and _Mirrors of the World._

Notwithstanding these inevitable strayings, the new idea of history
as the spiritual drama of humanity, although it inclined toward myth,
yet acted with such energy as to weaken the ancient heteronomous
conception of history as directed toward the administration of abstract
instruction, useful in actual practice. History itself was now the
teaching, the knowledge of the life of the human race from its creation
upon the earth, through its struggles, up to its final state, which
was indicated in the near or remote horizon. History thus became the
work of God, teaching by His direct word and presence, which is to be
seen and heard in every part of it. Declarations are certainly not
wanting, indeed they abound, that the reading of histories is useful
as counselling, and particularly as inculcating, good behaviour and
abstention from evil. Sometimes it is a question of traditional and
conventional declarations, at others of particular designs: but
medieval historiography was not conceived, because it could not be
conceived, heteronomously.

If asceticism mortified minds, and if the miraculous clouded them, it
is not necessary to believe, on the other hand, that either had the
power to depress reality altogether and for a long period. Indeed,
precisely because asceticism was arbitrary, and mythology imaginary,
they remained more or less abstract, in the same way as allegorical
interpretation, which was impotent to suppress the real determinations
of fact. It was all very well to despise and condemn the earthly city
in words, but it forced itself upon the attention, and if it did not
speak to the intellect it spoke to the souls and to the passions of
men. In its period of youthful vigour, also, Christianity was obliged
to tolerate profane history, dictated by economic, political, and
military interests, side by side with sacred history. And as in the
course of the Middle Ages, in addition to the religious poetry of the
sacred hymns and poems, there also existed an epic of territorial
conquests, of the shock of peoples and of feudal strife, so there
continued to exist a worldly history, more or less mingled and tempered
with religious history. We find even fervent Christians and the most
pious of priests yielding to the desire of collecting and handing down
the memory of their race: thus Gregory of Tours told of the Franks,
Paulus Diaconus of the Lombards, Bede of the Angles, Widekind of the
Saxons. Their gentle hearts of political partisans do not cease to
beat. Not only do they lament the misery and wickedness of humanity
in general, but also give vent to their particular feelings, as we
observe, for instance, in the monk Erchempertus, who, _ex intimo corde
ducens alta suspiria,_ resumes the thread of Paul's history to narrate
the deeds of his glorious Lombards (now hunted back into the southern
part of Italy alone and assaulted and imbushed on every side), _non
regnum sed excidium, non felicitatem sed miseriam, non triumphum sed
perniciem._ And Liutprand of Cremona, although he makes the deity
intervene as ruler and punisher on every occasion, and even the saints
in person do battle, does not fail, for instance, to note that when
Berengarius proceeded to take possession of the kingdom after the
death of Guido, the followers of the latter called for King Lambert,
_quia semper Itali geminis uti dominis volunt, quatinus alterum
alterius terrore coherceant_: which is also the definition of feudal
society. They were most credulous in many things, far from profound
and abandoned to their imagination, but they were not credulous,
indeed they were clear-sighted, shrewd and diffident in what concerned
the possessions and privileges of the churches and monasteries, of
families, and of the feudal group and the order of citizenship to which
each belonged. It is to these interests that we owe the formation of
archives, registers, chronologies, and the exercise of criticism as to
the authenticity and genuineness of documents. The conception of the
new Christian virtue oppressed, but did not quench, admiration (though
held sinful by the most severe) for the great name of ancient Rome, and
the many works of pagan civilization, its eloquence, its poetry, its
civil wisdom. Nor did it forbid admiration for Arabic or Judaic-Arabic
wisdom, of which the works were well received, notwithstanding
religious strife. Hence we may say that in the same way as Græco-Roman
humanism did not altogether exclude the supernatural, so the Christian
supernatural did not prevent human consideration of worldly passions
and earthly transactions.

This becomes more and more evident as we pass from the early to the
late Middle Ages, when profane historiography progresses, as the result
of the struggles between Church and State, of the communal movement,
of the more frequent commercial communications between Europe and the
East, and the like. These are themselves the result of the development,
the maturing, and the modernization of thought, which grows with life
and makes life grow. Neither life nor thought remained attached to the
conceptions of the fathers of the Church, of Augustine, of Orosius,
to whom history offered nothing but the proof of the infinite evils
that afflict humanity, of the unceasing punishments of God, and of
the "deaths of the persecutors." In Otto of Frisia himself, who holds
more firmly than the others to the doctrines of Augustine, we find the
asperity of doctrine tempered by grace; and when he afterward proceeds
to narrate the struggle between the Church and the Empire, if it cannot
be said that he takes the side of the Empire, it also cannot be said
that he resolutely defends that of the Church, for the eschatological
visions that form so great a part of his work do not blind his
practical sense and political judgment. The party of the faith against
the faithless remained, however, always the 'great party,' the great
'struggle of classes' (elect and reprobate) and of 'states' (celestial
and earthly cities). But within this large framework we perceive other
figures more closely particularized, other parties and interests,
which gradually come to occupy the first, second, and third planes,
so that the struggle between God and the devil is forced ever more
and more into the background and becomes somewhat vague, something
always assumed to be present, but not felt to be active and urgent in
the soul, as something which is still talked of, but is not deeply
felt, or at least felt with the energy that the words would wish us
to believe, the words themselves often sounding like a refrain, as
pious as it is conventional. The miraculous gradually fills less and
less space and appears more rarely: God acts more willingly by means
of secondary causes, and respects natural laws; He rarely intervenes
directly in a revolutionary manner. The form of the chronicles, too,
becomes also less accidental and arid, the better among the chroniclers
here and there seeking a different 'order'--that is to say, really, a
better understanding--and we find (particularly from the thirteenth
century onward) the _ordo artificialis_ or internal opposed to the
_ordo naturalis_ or external chronological order. There are also
to be found those who distinguish between the _sub singulis annis
describere_ and the _sub stilo historico conglutinare_--that is to
say, the grouping together according to things described. The general
aspect of historiography changes not a little. Limiting ourselves
to Italian historiography alone, there are no longer little books
upon the miracles and the translations of the bodies of saints and
bishops, but chronicles of communes, all of them full of affection for
the feudal superiors or for the archbishop, for the imperial or the
anti-imperial side, for Milan or for Bergamo, or for Lodi. The sense
of tragedy, which weighed so heavily upon Erchempertus, returns with
new and stronger accents in the narrative of the deeds of Barbarossa
at Milan, entitled _Libellus tristititiæ et doloris, angustiæ et
tribulationis, passionum et tormentorum._ Love for one's city usurps
much of the space previously devoted to things celestial, and praises
of Milan, of Bergamo, of Venice, of Amalfi, of Naples, resound in the
pages of their chroniclers. Thus those vast chronicles are reached
which, although they begin with the Tower of Babel, yet lead to the
history of that city or of that event which makes the strongest appeal
to the feelings and best stimulates the industry of the writer, and
become mingled with the persons and things of the present or future
life. Giovanni Villani, a pilgrim to Rome to celebrate the papal
jubilee, is not inspired with the ascetic spirit or raised to heaven by
that solemn spectacle; but, on the contrary, "since he finds himself
in the holy city of Rome on that blessed pilgrimage, inspecting its
_great_ and _ancient possessions,_ and reading the _histories and the
great deeds_ of the Romans," he is inspired to compose the history of
his native Fiorenza, "daughter and creation of Rome" (of ancient Rome
prior to Christianity). His Fiorenza resembled Rome in its rise to
greatness and its following after great things, and was like Rome in
its fall. Thus the 'holy' and the 'blessed' do not lead him to holy
and blessed thoughts, but to thoughts of worldly greatness. To the
historiography of the communes answers the more seriously worldly, the
more formally and historically elaborated historiography of the Norman
and Suabian kingdom of Sicily. In the proem to its _Constitutiones_
sovereigns are declared to be instituted _ipsa rerum necessitate
cogente, nec minus divinæ provisionis instinctu_; with its Romualdo
Guarna, its Abbot Telesino, its Malaterra, its Hugo Falcando and Pietro
da Eboli, its Riccardo da San Germano, with the pseudo-Jamsilla, and
Saba Malaspina. All of these have their heroes, Roger and William the
Normans, Frederick and Manfred the Suabians, and what they praise in
them is the sound political basis which they knew how to establish
and to maintain with a firm hand. _Eo tempore,_ says Falcando of
Roger, _Regnum Sicilia, strenuis et præclaris viris abundans, cum
terra marique plurimum posset, vicinis circumquoque gentibus terrorem
incusserat, summaque pace ac tranquillitate maxima fruebatur._ And
the so-called Jamsilla, of Frederick II: _Vir fuit magni cordis,
sed magnanitatem suam multa, qua in eo fuit, sapientia superavit,
ut nequaquam impetus eum ad aliquid faciendum impelleret, sed ad
omnia cum rationis maturitate procederet;... utpote qui philosophisæ
studiosus erat quam et ipse in se coluit, et in regno suo propagare
ordinavit. Tunc quidem ipsius felici tempore in regno Siciliæ erant
litterati pauci vel nulli; ipse vero imperator liberalium artium et
omnis approbatæ scientia scholas in regno ipso constituit ... ut
omnis conditionis et fortuna homines nullius occasione indigentiæ
a philosophiæ studio retraherentur._ The state, profane culture,
'philosophy,' impersonated in the heresiarch Frederick, are thus set in
clear relief. And while on the one hand more and more laical theories
of the state become joined to these political and cultural currents
(from Dante, indeed from Thomas Aquinas, to Marsilio of Padua), and
the first outlines of literary history (lives of the poets and of men
famous for their knowledge, and the rise of vernacular literatures) and
histories of manners (as in certain passages in Ricobaldo of Ferrara),
on the other hand scholasticism found its way to such problems and
conceptions by means of the works of Aristotle, which represented as
it were a first brief summary of ancient knowledge. It is unnecessary
to say that Dante's poem is the chief monument of this condition of
spirit, where the ideas of the Middle Ages are maintained, but the
political, poetical, and philosophical affections, the love of fame and
of glory, prove their vigour, although subordinated to those ideas and
restrained, as far as possible, by them.

But those ideas are nevertheless maintained, even among the
imperialists and adversaries of the Church, and it is only in rare
spirits that we find a partly sceptical and partly mocking negation
of them. Transcendency, the prescience of God, Who ordains, directs,
and disposes of everything according to His will, bestows rewards
and punishments, and intervenes mysteriously, always maintains its
place in the distant background, in Dante as in Giovanni Villani,
as in all the historians and chroniclers. Toward the close of the
fifteenth century the theological conception makes a curious appearance
in the French historian Comines, arm in arm with the most alert and
unprejudiced policy of success at all costs. Worldliness, so rich,
so various, and so complex, was yet without an ideal standard of
comparison, and for this reason it was rather lived than thought,
showing itself rather in richness of detail than systematically. The
ancient elements of culture, which had passed from Aristotelianism
into scholasticism, failed to act powerfully, because that part of
Aristotelianism was particularly selected which was in harmony with
Christian thought already translated into Platonic terms and dogmatized
in a transcendental form by the fathers of the Church. Hence it has
even been possible to note a pause in historiographical interest,
where scholasticism has prevailed, a compendium of the type of that of
Martin Polonus being held sufficient to serve the end of quotations for
demonstration or for legal purposes. What was required upon entering
a new period of progress (there is always progress, but 'periods of
progress' are those in which the motion of the spirit seems to become
accelerated and the fruit that has been growing ripe for centuries is
rapidly plucked) was a direct conscious negation of transcendency and
of Christian miracle, of ascesis and of eschatology, both in life
and in thought a negation whose terms (heavenly and earthly life) had
certainly been noted by medieval historiography, but had been allowed
to endure and to progress, the one beside the other, without true and
proper contact and conflict arising between them.




IV


THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE


The negation of Christian transcendency was the work of the age of
the Renaissance, when, to employ the expression used by Fueter,
historiography became 'secularized.' In the histories of Leonardo Bruni
and of Bracciolini, who gave the first conspicuous examples of the
new attitude of historiographical thought, and in all others of the
same sort which followed them--among them those of Machiavelli and of
Guicciardini shine forth conspicuously--we find hardly any trace of
'miracles.' These are recorded solely with the intention of mocking at
them and of explaining them in an altogether human manner. An acute
analysis of individual characters and interests is substituted for the
intervention of divine providence and the actions of the popes, and
religious strifes themselves are apt to be interpreted according to
utilitarian passions and solely with an eye to their political bearing.
The scheme of the four monarchies with the advent of Antichrist
connected with it is allowed to disappear; histories are now narrated
_ab inclinatione imperii,_ and even universal histories, like the
_Enneads_ of Sabellicus, do not adhere to traditional ecclesiastical
tradition. Chronicles of the world, universal miraculous histories,
both theological and apocalyptic, become the literature of the people
and of those with little culture, or persist in countries of backward
culture, such as Germany at that time, or finally are limited to the
circle of Catholic or Protestant confessional historiography, both
of which retain so much of the Middle Ages, the Protestant perhaps
more than the Catholic (at least at a first glance), for the latter
contrived at least here and there to temporize and to accommodate
itself to the times. All this is shown very clearly and minutely by
Fueter, and I shall now proceed to take certain observations and some
information from his book, which I shall rearrange and complete with
some more of my own. In the political historiography of the late Middle
Ages, the theological conception had been, as we have said, thrown into
the background; but henceforward it is not to be found even there,
and if at times we hear its formulas, they are just like those of the
Crusade against the Turks, preaching the liberation of the tomb of
Christ. These were still repeated by preachers, writers of verse, and
rhetoricians (and continued to be repeated for three centuries), but
they found no response in political reality and in the conscience of
the people, because they were but empty sound. Nor was the negation
of theologism and the secularization of history accomplished only in
practice, unaccompanied with complete consciousness; for, although
many minds really did turn in the direction indicated by fate, or in
other words by the new mental necessity, and although the polemic
was not always open, but on the contrary often surrounded with many
precautions, evidence abounds of the agreement of the practice with
the theory of historiography. The criticism of so grave a theorist of
history as Bodin is opposed to the scheme of the four monarchies. He
makes it his object to combat the _inveteratum errorem de quattuor
imperiis,_ proving that the notion was capriciously taken from the
dream of Daniel, and that it in no way corresponded with the real
course of events. It would be superfluous to record here the celebrated
epigrams of Machiavelli and of Guicciardini, who satirized theology
and miracles. Guicciardini noted that all religions have boasted of
miracles, and therefore they are not proofs of any one of them, and
are perhaps nothing but "secrets of nature." He advised his readers
never to say that God had aided so-and-so because he was good and
had made so-and-so suffer because he was wicked, for we "often see
the opposite," and the counsels of divine providence are in fact
an abyss. Paolo Sarpi, although he admits that "it is a pious and
religious thought to attribute the disposition of every event to divine
providence," yet holds it "presumption" to determine "to what end
events are directed by that highest wisdom"; for men, being emotionally
attached to their opinions, "are persuaded that they are as much loved
and favoured by God as by themselves." Hence, for example, they argued
that God had caused Zwingli and Hecolampadius to die almost at the
same time, in order that he might punish and remove the ministers of
discord, whereas it is certain that "after the death of these two, the
evangelical cantons have made greater progress in the doctrine that
they received from both of them." Such a disposition of religious and
cautious spirits is yet more significant than that of the radical and
impetuous, openly irreverent, in the same way as the new importance
attributed to history is notable in the increase of historiographical
labour that is then everywhere noticeable, and in the formation of a
true and proper philological school, not only for antiquity, but for
the Middle Ages (Valla, Flavio Biondo, Calchi, Sigonio, Beato Renano,
etc.), which publishes and restores texts, criticizes the authenticity
and the value of sources, is occupied with the establishment of a
technical method of examining witnesses, and composes learned histories.

Nothing is more natural than that the new form of historiography
should seem to be a return to Græco-Roman antiquity, as Christianity
had seemed to be a return to the story of Eden (the interlude of
paganism having been brought to an end by the redemption), or that the
Middle Ages should still seem to some to-day to be a falling back into
barbarous pre-Hellenic times. The illusion of the return was expressed
in the cult of classical antiquity, and in all those manifestations,
literary, artistic, moral, and customary, familiar to those who know
the Renaissance. In the special field with which we are at present
occupied, we find a curious document in support of the difficulty that
philologists and critics experienced in persuading themselves that the
Greek and Roman writers had perhaps been able to deceive themselves, to
lie, to falsify, to be led astray by passions and blinded by ignorance,
in the same way as those of the Middle Ages. Thus the latter were
severely criticized while the former were reverenced and accepted, for
it needed much time and labour to attain to an equal mental freedom
regarding the ancients, and the criticism of texts and of sources was
developed in respect to medieval history long before it attained to
a like freedom in respect to ancient history. But the greatest proof
and monument of the illusion of the return was the formation of the
_humanistic_ type of historiography, opposed to the medieval. This
had been chiefly confined to the form of chronicle and humanistic
historiography, although it accepted the arrangement by years and
seasons according to the examples set by the Greeks and Romans,
cancelled as far as possible numerical indications, and exerted itself
to run on unbrokenly, without chronological cuts and cross-cuts.
Latin had become barbarous in the Middle Ages and had accepted the
vocabularies of vulgar tongues, or those which designated new things
in a new way, whereas the humanistic historiographers translated and
disguised every thought and every narrative in Ciceronian Latin, or
at least Latin of the Golden Age. We frequently find picturesque
anecdotes in the medieval chronicles, and humanism, while it restored
its dignity to history, deprived it of that picturesque element, or
attenuated and polished it as it had done the things and customs of the
barbaric centuries. This humanistic type of historiography, like the
new philological erudition and criticism and the whole movement of the
Renaissance, was Italian work, and in Italy histories in the vulgar
tongue were soon modelled upon it, which found in the latinized prose
of Boccaccio an instrument well suited to their ends. From Italy it was
diffused among other countries, and as always happens when an industry
is transplanted into virgin soil, and workmen and technical experts are
invited to come from the country of its origin, so the first humanistic
historians of the other parts of Europe were Italians. Paolo Emilio
the Veronese, who _Gallis condidit historias,_ gave the French the
humanistic history of France in his _De rebus gestis Francorum,_ and
Polydore Virgil did the like for England, Lucio Marineo for Spain, and
many others for other countries, until indigenous experts appeared and
the aid of Italians became unnecessary. Later on it became necessary to
throw off this cloak, which was too loose or too tight--indeed, was not
cut to the model of modern thought. What there was in it of artificial,
of swollen, of false, was blamed--these defects being indeed clearly
indicated in the constructive principle of this literary form, which
was that of imitation. But anyone with a feeling for the past will
enjoy that historical humanistic prose as the expression of love for
antiquity and of the desire to rise to its level. This love and this
desire were so keen that they had no hesitation in reproducing things
external and indifferent in addition to what was better and sometimes
in default of it. Giambattista Vico, sometimes so sublimely puerile, is
still found lamenting, three centuries after the creation of humanistic
historiography, that "no sovereign has been found into whose mind has
entered the thought of preserving for ever in the best Latin style
a record of the famous War of the Spanish Succession, than which a
greater has never happened in the world since the Second Carthaginian
War, that of Cæsar with Pompey, and of Alexander with Darius." But what
of this? Quite recently, during the war in Tripoli, came the proposal
from the depths of one of the meridional provinces of Italy, one of
those little countrysides where the shadow of a humanist still exists,
that a Latin commentary should be composed upon that war entitled
_De bello libico._ This proposal was received with much laughter and
made even me smile, yet the smile was accompanied with a sort of
tender emotion, when I recalled how long and devotedly our fathers and
forefathers had pursued the ideal of a beautiful antiquity and of a
decorous historiography.

Nevertheless, the belief in the effectivity or possibility of such a
return was, as we have said, an illusion; nothing of what has been
returns, nothing of what has been can be abolished; even when we
return to an old thought the new adversary makes the defence new and
the thought itself new. I read some time ago the work of a learned
French Catholic. While clearing the Middle Ages of certain absurd
accusations and confuting errors commonly circulated about them, he
maintained that the Middle Ages are the truly modern time, modern with
the eternal modernity of the true, and that therefore they should
not be called the Middle Ages, which term should be applied to the
period that has elapsed between the fifteenth century and our own
day, between the Reformation and positivism. As I read, I reflected
that such a theory is the worthy pendant to that other theory, which
places the Middle Ages beneath antiquity, and that both had some time
ago shown themselves false to historical thought, which knows nothing
of returns, but knows that the Middle Ages preserved antiquity deep
in its heart as the Renaissance preserved the Middle Ages. And what
is 'humanism' but a renewed formula of that 'humanity' of which the
ancient world knew little or nothing, and which Christianity and the
Middle Ages had so profoundly felt? What is the word 'renaissance'
or 'renewal' but a metaphor taken from the language of religion? And
setting aside the word, is not the conception of humanism perhaps the
affirmation of a spiritual and universal value, and in so far as it is
that, altogether foreign, as we know, to the mind of antiquity, and an
intrinsic continuation of the 'ecclesiastical' and 'spiritual' history
which appeared with Christianity? The conception of spiritual value
had without doubt become changed or enriched, for it contained within
itself more than a thousand years of mental experiences, thoughts, and
actions. But while it thus grew more rich, it preserved its original
character, and constituted the religion of the new times, with its
priests and martyrs, its polemic and its apologetic, its intolerance
(it destroyed or allowed to perish the monuments of the Middle Ages
and condemned its writers to oblivion), and sometimes even imitated the
forms of its worship (Navagaro used to burn a copy of Martial every
year as a holocaust to pure Latinity). And since humanity, philosophy,
science, literature, and especially art, politics, activity in all its
forms, now fill that conception of value which the Middle Ages had
placed in Christian religious faith alone, histories or outlines of
histories continue to appear as the outcome of these determinations,
which were certainly new in respect to medieval literature, but were
not less new in respect to Græco-Roman literature, where there was
nothing to compare to them, or only treatises composed in an empirical
and extrinsic manner. The new histories of values presented them selves
timidly, imitating in certain respects the few indent examples, but
they gave evidence of a fervour, an intelligence, an afflatus, which
led to a hope for that increase and development wanting to their
predecessors, which, instead of developing, had gradually become more
superficial and finally disappeared again into vagueness. Suffice it to
mention as representative of them all Vasari's _Lives of the Painters,_
which are connected with the meditations and the researches upon art
contained in so many treatises, dialogues, and letters of Italians, and
are here and there shot through with flashes such as never shone in
antiquity. The same may be said of treatises on poetry and rhetoric,
and of the judgments which they contain as to poetry and of the new
history of poetry, then being attempted with more or less successful
results. The 'state' too, which forms the object of the meditations
of Machiavelli, is not the simple state of antiquity, city or empire,
but is almost the national state felt as something divine, to which
even the salvation of the soul must be sacrificed--that is to say,
as the institution in which the true salvation of the soul is to be
found. Even the pagan virtue which he and others opposed to Christian
virtue is very different from the pure Græco-Roman disposition of mind.
At that time a start was also made in the direction of investigating
the theory of rights, of political forms, of myths and beliefs, of
philosophical systems, to-day in full flower. And since that same
consciousness which had produced humanism had also widened the
boundaries of the known world, and had sought for and found people of
whom the Bible preserved no record and of whom the Græco-Roman writers
knew nothing, there appeared at that time a literature relating to
savages and to the indigenous civilizations of America (and also of
distant Asia, which had been better explored), from which arose the
first notions as to the primitive forms of human life. Thus were
widened the spiritual boundaries of humanity at the same time as the
material.

We are not alone in perceiving the illusion of the 'return to
antiquity,' for the men of the Renaissance were not slow in doing this.
Not every one was content to suit himself to the humanistic literary
type. Some, like Machiavelli, threw away that cloak, too ample in its
folds and in its train, preferring to it the shorter modern dress.
Protests against pedantry and imitation are indeed frequently to be
heard during the course of the century. Philosophers rebelled against
Aristotle (first against the medieval and then against the ancient
Aristotle), and appeals were made to truth, which is superior both to
Plato and to Aristotle; men of letters advocated the new 'classes,'
and artists repeated that the great masters were 'nature' and the
'idea.' One feels in the air that the time is not far distant when the
question, "Who are the true ancients?"--that is to say, "Who are the
intellectually expert and mature?"--will be answered with, "We are";
the symbol of antiquity will be broken and there will be found within
it the reality which is human thought, ever new in its manifestations.
Such an answer may possibly be slow in becoming clear and certain as an
object of common conviction, though it will eventually become so, and
now suffices to explain the true quality of that return antiquity, by
preventing the taking of the symbol for the thing symbolized.

This symbolical covering, cause of prejudices and misunderstandings,
which enfolded the whole of humanism, was not the sole vice from
which the historiography of the Renaissance suffered. We do not,
of course, speak here of the bias with which all histories were
variously affected, according as they were written by men of letters
who were also courtiers and supported the interests of their masters,
or official historians of aristocratic and conservative states like
Venice, or men taking one or the other side in the conflicts within the
same state, such as the _ottimani_ (or aristocratic) and the popular
party of Florence, or upholders of opposed religious beliefs, such as
the group of reformed divines of Magdeburg and Baronio. We do not speak
here of the historians who became story-writers (they sometimes take to
history, like Bandello), or of those who collected information with a
view to exciting curiosity and creating scandal. These are things that
belong to all periods, and are not sufficient to qualify a particular
historiographical age. But if we examine only that which is or wished
to be historical thought, the historiography of the Renaissance
suffered from two other defects, each of which it had inherited from
one of its progenitors, antiquity and the Middle Ages. And above all
there came to it from antiquity the humanistic-abstract or pragmatical
conception, as it is called, which inclines to explain facts by the
individual in his singularity and in his atomism, or by means of
abstract political forms, and the like. For Machiavelli, the prince is
not only the ideal but the criterion that he adopts for the explanation
of events. He does not only appear in his treatises and political
opuscules, but in the Florentine Histories, where we meet with him at
the very beginning--after the terrible imaginative description of
the condition of Italy in the fifth century--in the great figure of
Theodoric, by whose 'virtue' and 'goodness' not only Rome and Italy,
but all the other parts of the Western empire, "arose free from the
continual scourgings which they had supported for so many years from so
many invasions, and became again happy and well-ordered communities."
The same figure reappears in many different forms in the course of
the centuries described in those histories. Finally, at the end of
the description of the social struggles of Florence, we read that
"this city had reached such a point that it could be easily adapted to
_any form of government_ by _a wise law-giver._" In like manner, the
_History of Italy_ by Guicciardini begins with the description of the
happiness of Italy at the end of the fifteenth century, "acquired at
various times and preserved for many reasons," not the least of which
was "the industry and genius of Lorenzo de' Medici," who "strove in
every way so to balance Italian affairs that they should not incline
more in one direction than another." He had allies in Ferdinand of
Aragon and Ludovic the Moor, "partly for the same and partly for other
reasons," and the Venetians were held in check by all three of them.
This perfect system of equilibrium was broken by the deaths of Lorenzo,
of Ferdinand, and of the Pope. All historians of this period express
themselves in the same way, and although a lively consciousness of the
spiritual values of humanity was in process of formation, as has been
seen, yet these were spoken of as though they depended upon the will
and the intelligence of individuals who were their masters, not the
contrary. In the history of painting, for example, the 'prince' for
Vasari is Giotto, "who, although born among inexpert artisans, alone
revived painting and reduced it to such a form as might be described as
good." Biographies are also constantly individualistic, for they never
succeed in perfectly uniting the individual with the work which he
creates and which in turn creates him.

The idea of chance or fortune persisted alongside the pragmatic
conception, its ancient companion. Machiavelli assigns the course of
events half to fortune and half to human prudence, and although the
accent falls here upon prudence, the acknowledgment of the one does
not abolish the force of the other, so mysterious and transcendent.
Guicciardini attacks those who, while attributing everything to
prudence and virtue, exclude "the power of fortune," because we
see that human affairs "receive at all times great impulsions from
fortuitous events, which it is not within the power of man either to
foresee or to escape, and although the care and understanding of man
may moderate many things, nevertheless that alone does not suffice,
but good fortune is also necessary." It is true that here and there
there seems to appear another conception in Machiavelli, that of the
strength and logic of things, but it is only a fleeting shadow. It is
also a shadow for Guicciardini, when he adds that even if we wish to
attribute everything to prudence and virtue, "must at least admit that
it is necessary to fall upon or be born in times when the virtues or
qualities for which you value yourself are esteemed." Guicciardini
remains perplexed as to one point only, as though he had caught a
glimpse of something that is neither caprice of the individual nor
contingency of fortune: "When I consider to what accidents and dangers
of illness, of chance, of violence, of infinite sorts, is exposed the
life of man, the concurrence of how many things is needful that the
harvest of the year should be good, nothing surprises me more than to
see an old man or a good harvest." But even here we do not get beyond
uncertainty, which in this case manifests itself as astonishment. With
the renewal of the idea of fortune, even to a partial extent, with
the restitution of the cult of this pagan divinity, not only does
the God of Christianity disappear, but also the idea of rationality,
of finality, of development, affirmed during the medieval period.
The ancient Oriental idea of the circle in human affairs returns;
it dominated all the historians of the Renaissance, and above all
Machiavelli. History is an alternation of lives and deaths, of goods
and ills, of happiness and misery, of splendour and decadence. Vasari
understands the history of painting in the same way as that of all
the arts, which, "like human bodies, have their birth, their growth,
their old age, and their death." He is solicitous of preserving in his
book the memory of the artistic capacity of his time, lest the art
of painting, "either owing to the neglect of men or to the malignity
of the ages or to decree of heaven (which does not appear to wish
to maintain things here below for long in the same state), should
encounter the same disorder and ruin" as befell it in the Middle
Ages. Bodin, while criticizing and rejecting the scheme of the four
monarchies, and demonstrating the fallaciousness of the assertion that
gold deteriorates into copper, or even into clay, and celebrating the
splendour of letters, of commerce, of the geographical discoveries of
his age, does not, however, conclude in favour of progress, but of
the circle, blaming those who find everything inferior in antiquity,
_cum, æterna quadam lege naturæ, conversiti omnium rerum velut in orbem
redire videatur, ut aqua vitia virtutibus, ignoratio scientiæ, turpe
honesto consequens sit, ac tenebræ luci._ The sad, bitter, pessimistic
tone which we observe among ancient historians, which sometimes
bursts forth into the tragic, is also often to be met with among the
historians of the Renaissance, for they saw perish many things that
were very dear to them, and were constrained to tremble for those which
they still enjoyed, or at least to fear for them by anticipation,
certain that sooner or later they would yield their place to their
contraries.

And since history thus conceived does not represent progress but a
circle, and is not directed by the historical law of development,
but by the natural law of the circle, which gives it regularity and
uniformity, it follows that the historiography of the Renaissance,
like the Græco-Roman, has its end outside itself, and affords nothing
but material suitable for exhortations toward the useful and the good,
for various forms of pleasure or as ornament for abstract truths.
Historians and theorists of history are all in agreement as to this,
with the exception of such eccentrics as Patrizzi, who expressed
doubts as to the utility of knowing what had happened and as to
the truth itself of narratives, but ended by contradicting himself
and also laying down an extrinsic end. "Each one of us can find,
both on his own account and on that of the public weal, many useful
documents in the knowledge of these so different and so important
examples," writes Guicciardini in the proem to his History of Italy.
"Hence will clearly appear, as the result of innumerable examples,
the instability of things human, how harmful they are often wont to
be to themselves, but ever to the people, the ill-conceived counsels
of those who rule, when, having only before their eyes either vain
errors or present cupidities, they are not mindful of the frequent
variations of fortune, and converting the power that has been granted
them for the common weal into an injury to others, they become the
authors of new perturbations, either as the result of lack of prudence
or of too much ambition." And Bodin holds that _non solum præsentia
commode explicantur, sed etiam futura colliguntur, certissimaque rerum
expetendarum ac fugiendarum præcepta constantur,_ from historical
narratives. Campanella thinks that history should be composed _ut sit
scientiarum fundamentum sufficiens_; Vossius formulates the definition
that was destined to appear for centuries in treatises: _cognitio
singularium, quorum memoriam conservari utile sit ad bene beateque
vivendum._ Historical knowledge therefore seemed at that time to be
the lowest and easiest form of knowledge (and this view has been held
down to our own days); to such an extent that Bodin, in addition
to the _utilitas_ and the _oblectatio,_ also recognized to history
_facilitas,_ so great a facility _ut, sine ullius artis adjumento, ipsa
per sese ab omnibus intelligatur._ When truth had been placed outside
historical narrative, all the historians of the Renaissance, like
their Greek and Roman predecessors, practised, and all the theorists
(from Pontanus in the _Actius_ to Vossius in the _Ars historica_)
defended, the use of more or less imaginary orations and exhortations,
not only as the result of bowing to ancient example, but through their
own convictions. Eventually M. de la Popelinière, in his _Histoire
des histoires, avec l'idée de l'histoire accomplie_ (1599), where
he inculcates in turn historical exactitude and sincerity with such
warm eloquence, suddenly turns round to defend imaginary _harangues
et concions,_ for this fine reason, that what is necessary is 'truth'
and not 'the words' in which it is expressed! The truth of history
was thus not history, but oratory and political science; and if the
historians of the Renaissance were hardly ever able to exercise oratory
(for which the political constitution of the time allowed little
scope), all or nearly all were authors of treatises upon political
science, differently inspired as compared with those of the Middle
Ages, which had ethical and religious thought behind them, resuming
and advancing the speculations of Aristotle and of ancient political
writers. In like manner, treatises on historical art, unknown to the
Middle Ages, but which rapidly multiplied in the Renaissance (see a
great number of them in the _Penus artis historicæ_ of 1579), resumed
and fertilized the researches of Græco-Roman theorists. It is to be
expected that the historiography of this period should represent some
of the defects of medieval historiography in another form, owing to
its character of reaction already mentioned and to the new divinity
that it had raised up upon the altars in place of the ancient divinity,
humanity. The Renaissance everywhere reveals its effort to oppose the
one term to the other, and since scholasticism had sought the things
of God and of the soul, it wished to restrict itself to the things
of nature. We find Guicciardini and a chorus of others describing the
investigations of philosophers and theologians and "of all those who
write things above nature or such as are not seen" as 'madnesses';
and because scholasticism had defined science in the Aristotelian
manner as _de universalibus,_ Campanella opposed to this definition
his _Scientia est de singularibus._ In like manner its men of letters,
prejudiced in favour of Latin, at first refused to recognize the new
languages that had been formed during the Middle Ages, as well as
medieval literature and poetry; its jurists rejected the feudal in
favour of the Roman legal code, its politicians representative forms
in favour of absolute lordship and monarchy. It was then that first
appeared the conception of the Middle Ages as a whole, opposed to
another whole, formed of the ancient and the ancient-modern, into
which the Middle Ages were inserted like an irksome and painful wedge.
The word 'medieval' was certainly late in appearing as an official
designation, employed in the divisions and titles of histories (toward
the end of the seventeenth century, as it would seem, in the manuals
of Cellario); previously it had only just occurred here and there; but
the thought contained in it had been in the air for some time--that is
to say, in the soul of everybody--eked out with other words, such as
'barbarous' or 'Gothic' ages, and Vasari expresses it by means of the
distinction between ancient and 'old,' calling those things ancient
which occurred before the existence of Constantine, of Corinth, of
Athens, of Rome, and of other very famous cities built up to the time
of Nero, of the Vespasians, of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus, and
'old' those "which had their origin from St Silvester onward." In
any case, the distinction was clear: on the one hand most brilliant
light, on the other dense darkness. After Constantine, writes the
same Vasari, "every sort of virtue" was lost, "beautiful" souls and
"lofty" intellects became corrupted into "most ugly" and "basest,"
and the fervent zeal of the new religion did infinite damage to the
arts. This means neither more nor less than that _dualism,_ one of the
capital traits of the Middle Ages, was retained, although differently
determined, for now the god was (although not openly acknowledged)
antiquity, art, science, Greek and Roman life, and its adversary, the
reprobate and rebel, was the Middle Age, 'Gothic' temples, theology and
philosophy bristling with difficulties, the clumsy and cruel customs of
that age. But just because the respective functions of the two terms
were merely inverted, their opposition remained, and if Christianity
did not succeed in understanding Paganism and in recognizing its
father, so the Renaissance failed to recognize itself as the son of
the Middle Ages, and did not understand the positive and durable value
of the period that was closing. For this reason, both ages destroyed
or allowed to disappear the monuments of the previous age. This was
certainly far less the case with the Renaissance, which expressed
itself less violently and was deeply imbued with the thought of the
Middle Ages, and, owing to the idea of humanity, had an obscure feeling
of the importance of its predecessor. So much was this the case that
the school of learned men and philologists already mentioned was formed
at that time, with the new of investigating medieval antiquities. But
the learned are the learned--that is to say, they do not take an active
part in the struggles of their time, though busied with the collection
and arrangement of its chronicles and remains, which they often judge
in accordance with the vulgar opinion of their own time, so that it is
quite customary to find them despising the subject of their labours,
declaring that the poet whom they are studying has no value, or that
the period to which they are consecrating their entire life is ugly
and displeasing. It needed much to free the flame of intelligence from
the heaps of medieval antiquities accumulated for centuries by the
learned, and the Middle Ages were abhorred during the Renaissance,
even when they were investigated. The drama of love and hatred was not
dissimilar in its forms, nor less bitterly dualistic, although vastly
more interesting, than that which was then being played out between
Catholics and Protestants. The latter called the Pope Antichrist, and
the primacy of the Roman Church _mysterium iniquitatis,_ and compiled
a catalogue _testium veritatis_ of those who had opposed that iniquity
even while it prevailed. The Catholics returned the compliment with
remarks about Luther and the Reformation, and composed catalogues
of heretics, Satan's witnesses. But this strife was a relic of the
past, and would have ended by becoming gradually attenuated and
dispersed; whereas the other was an element of the future, and could
only be conquered by long effort and a new conception of the loftiest
character.




V


THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT


Meanwhile the historiography which immediately followed pushed the
double aporia of antiquity and of the Middle Ages to the extreme; and
it was owing to this radical unprejudiced procedure that it acquired
its definite physiognomy and the right of being considered a particular
historiographical period. The symbolical vesture, woven of memories of
the Græco-Roman world, with which the modern spirit had first clothed
itself, is now torn and thrown away. The thought that the ancients had
not been the oldest and wisest among the peoples, but the youngest
and the least expert, and that the true ancients, that is to say, the
most expert and mature in mind, are co be found in the men of the
modern world, had little by little made its way and become universally
accepted. Reason in its nudity, henceforth saluted by its proper
name, succeeds the example and the authority of the Græco-Romans,
which represented reason opposed to barbaric culture and customs.
Humanitarianism, the cult of humanity, also idolized by the name of
'nature,' that is to say, ingenuous general human nature, succeeds to
humanism, with its one-sided admirations for certain peoples and for
certain forms of life. Histories written in Latin become scarce or
are confined to the learned, and those written in national languages
are multiplied; criticism is exercised not only upon medieval
falsifications and fables, upon the writings of credulous and ignorant
monks in monasteries, but upon the pages of ancient historians, and the
first doubts appear as to the truth of the historical Roman tradition.
A feeling of sympathy, however, toward the ancients still persists,
whereas repugnance and abhorrence for the Middle Ages continue to
increase. All feel and say that they have emerged, not only from
darkness, but from the twilight before dawn, that the sun of reason
is high on the horizon, illuminating the intellect and irradiating
it with most vivid light. 'Light,' 'illumination,' and the like are
words pronounced on every occasion and with ever increasing conviction
and energy; hence the title 'age of light,' of 'enlightenment' or
of 'illumination,' given to the period extending from Descartes to
Kant. Another term began to circulate, at first used rarely and in
a restricted sense--'progress.' It gradually becomes more insistent
and familiar, and finally succeeds in supplying a criterion for the
judgment of facts, for the conduct of life, for the construction of
history, becomes the subject of special investigations, and of a new
kind of history, the history of the _progresses_ of the human spirit.

But here we observe the persistence and the potency of Christian and
theological thought. The progress so much discussed was, so to speak,
a progress without _development,_ manifesting itself chiefly in a sigh
of satisfaction and security, as of one, favoured by fortune, who has
successfully encountered many obstacles and now looks serenely upon
the present, secure as to the future, with mind averted from the past,
or returning to it now and then for a brief moment only, in order to
lament its ugliness, to despise and to smile at it. Take as an example
of all the most intelligent and at the same time the best of the
historical representatives of enlightenment M. de Voltaire, who wrote
his _Essai sur les mœurs_ in order to aid his friend the Marquise du
Châtelet to _surmonter le dégoût_ caused her by _l'histoire moderne
depuis la décadence de l'Empire romain,_ treating the subject in a
satirical vein. Or take Condorcet's work, _l'Esquisse d'un tableau
historique des progrès de l'esprit humain,_ which appears at its end
like a last will and testament (and also as the testament of the man
who wrote it), and where we find the whole century in compendium.
It is as happy in the present, even in the midst of the slaughters
of the Revolution, as rosy in its views as to the future, as it is
full of contempt and sarcasm for the past, which had generated that
present. The felicity of the period upon which they were entering
was clearly stated. Voltaire says that at this time _les hommes ont
acquis plus de lumières d'un bout de l'Europe à l'autre que dans
tous les âges précédents._ Man now brandishes the arm which none can
resist: _la seule arme contre le monstre, c'est la Raison: la seule
manière d'empêcher les hommes d'être absurdes et méchants, c'est de
les éclairer; pour rendre le fanatisme exécrable, il ne faut que le
peindre._ Certainly it was not denied that there had been something
of good and beautiful in the past. They must have existed, if they
suffered from superstition and oppression. _On voit dans l'histoire
les erreurs et les préjugés se succéder tour à tour, et chasser la
vérité et la raison: on voit les habiles et les heureux enchaîner
les imbéciles et écraser les infortunés; et encore ces habiles et
ces heureux sont eux-mêmes les jouets de la fortune, ainsi quelles
esclaves qu'ils gouvernent._ And not only had the good existed, though
oppressed, but it had also been efficient in a certain measure: _au
milieu de ces saccagements et de ces destructions nous voyons un amour
de l'ordre qui anime en secret le genre humain et qui a prévenu sa
ruine totale: c'est un des ressorts de la nature, qui reprend toujours
sa force...._ And then the 'great epochs' must not be forgotten, the
'centuries' in which the arts nourished as the result of the work
of wise men and monarchs, les quatre âges heureux of history. But
between this sporadic good, weak or acting covertly, or appearing
only for a time and then disappearing, and that of the new era, the
quantitative and energetic difference is such that it is turned into
a qualitative difference: a moment comes when men learn to think, to
rectify their ideas, and past history seems like a tempestuous sea
to one who has landed upon solid earth. Certainly everything is not
to be praised in the new times; indeed, there is much to blame: _les
abus servent de lois dans presque toute la terre; et si les plus sages
des hommes s'assemblaient pour faire des lois, où est l'État dont
la forme subsistât entière?_ The distance from the ideal of reason
was still great and the new century had still to consider itself as
a simple step toward complete rationality and felicity. We find the
fancy of a social form limit even in Kant, who dragged after him
so much old intellectualistic and scholastic philosophy. Sometimes
indeed its final form was not discovered, and its place was taken by a
vertiginous succession of more and more radiant social forms. But the
series of these radiant forms, the progress toward the final form and
the destruction of abuses, really began in the age of enlightenment,
after some episodic attempts in that direction during previous ages,
for this age alone had entered upon the just, the wide, the sure
path, the path illumined with the light of reason. It sometimes even
happened in the course of that period that a doctrine leading to
Rousseau's inverted the usual view and placed _reason,_ not in modern
times or in the near or distant future, but in the past, and not in
the medieval, Græco-Roman, or Oriental past, but in the prehistoric
past, in the 'state of nature,' from which history represented the
deviation. But this theory, though differing in its mode of expression,
was altogether identical in substance with that generally accepted,
because a prehistoric 'state of nature' never had any existence in the
reality, which is history, but expressed an ideal to be attained in a
near or distant future, which had first been perceived in modern times
and was therefore really capable of moving in that direction, whether
in the sense of realization or return. The religious character of all
this new conception of the world cannot be obscure to anyone, for it
repeats the Christian conceptions of God as truth and justice (the lay
God), of the earthly paradise, the redemption, the millennium, and so
on, in laical terms, and in like manner with! Christianity sets the
whole of previous history in opposition to itself, to condemn it, while
hardly admiring here and there some consoling ray of itself. What does
it matter that religion, and especially Christianity, was then the
target for fiercest blows and shame and mockery, that all reticence was
abandoned, and people were no longer satisfied with the discreet smile
that had once blossomed on the lips of the Italian humanists, but broke
out into open and fanatical warfare? Even lay fanaticism is the result
of dogmatism. What does it matter that pious folk were shocked and saw
the ancient Satan in the lay God, as the enlightened discovered the
capricious, domineering, cruel tribal deity in the old God represented
by the priest? The possibility of reciprocal accusations confirms the
_dualism,_ active in the new as in the old conception, and rendering
it unsuitable for the understanding of development and of history.

The historiographical _aporia_ of antiquity was also being increased
by abstract individualism or the 'pragmatic' conception. So true was
this that it was precisely at that time that the formula was resumed,
and pragmatism, as history of human ideas, sentiments, calculations,
and actions, as a narrative embellished with reflections, was opposed
to theological or medieval history and to the old ingenuous chronicles
or erudite collections of information and documents. Voltaire, who
combats and mocks at belief in divine designs and punishments and in
the leadership of a small barbarous population called upon to act as an
elect people and to be the axle of universal history (so that he may
substitute for it the lay theology which has been described), is the
same Voltaire who praises in Guicciardini and in Machiavelli the first
appearance of an _histoire bien faite._ The pragmatic mode of treatment
was extended even to the narrative of events relating to religion and
the Church and was applied by Mosheim and others in Germany. Owing to
this penetration of rationalism into ecclesiastical historiography and
into Protestant philosophy, it afterward seemed that the Reformation
had caused thought to progress, whereas, as regards this matter,
the Reformation simply received humanistic thought in the new form,
to which it had previously been opposed. If, in other respects, it
aided the advance of the historical conception in an original manner,
this was brought about, as we shall see, by means of another element
seething within it, mysticism. But meanwhile not even Catholicism
remained immune from the pragmatic, of which we find traces in the
_Discours_ of Bossuet, who represents the Augustinian conception, shorn
of its accessories, reduced and modernized, lacking the irreconcilable
dualism of the two cities and the Roman Empire as the ultimate and
everlasting empire, allowing natural causes preordained by God and
regulated by the laws to operate side by side with divine intervention,
and conceding a large share to the social and political conditions of
the various peoples. We do not speak of the last step taken by the same
author in his _Histoire des variations des églises_, when he conceived
the history of the Reformation objectively and in its internal motives,
presenting it as a rebellious movement directed against authority.
Even his adversary Voltaire recognized that Bossuet had not omitted
_d'autres causes_ in addition to the divine will favouring the elect
people, because he had several times taken count de l'esprit des
nations. Such was the strength of _l'esprit du siècle._ The pragmatic
conceptions of that time are still so well known and so near to us,
so persistent in so many of our narratives and historical manuals,
that it would be useless to describe them. When we direct our thoughts
to the historical works of the eighteenth century, there immediately
rises to the memory the general outline of a history in which priests
deceive, courtiers intrigue, wise monarchs conceive and realize good
institutions, combated and rendered almost vain through the malignity
of others and the ignorance of the people, though they remain
nevertheless a perpetual object of admiration for enlightened spirits.
The image of chance or caprice appears with the evocation of that
image, and mingling with the histories of these conflicts makes them
yet more complicated, their results yet stranger and more astonishing.
And what was the use, that is to say, the end, of historical narrative
in the view of those historians? Here also the reading of a few lines
of Voltaire affords the explanation: _Cet avantage consiste surtout
dans la comparaison qu'un homme d'état, un citoyen, peut faire des lois
et des mours étrangères avec celles de son pays: c'est ce qui excite
l'émulation des nations modernes dans les arts, dans l''agriculture,
dans le commerce. Les grandes fautes passées servent beaucoup à tout
genre. On ne saurait trop remettre devant les yeux les crimes et
les malheurs: on peut, quoi qu'on en dise, prévenir les uns et les
autres._ This thought is repeated with many verbal variations and is
to be found in nearly all the books of historiographie theory of the
time, continuing the Italian mode of the Renaissance in an easier
and more popular style. The words 'philosophy of history,' which had
later so much success, at first served to describe the assistance
obtainable from history in the shape of advice and useful precepts,
when investigated without prejudice--that is to say, with the one
'assumption' of reason.

The external end assigned to history led to the same results as in
antiquity, when history became oratorical and even historico-pedagogic
romances were composed, and as in the Renaissance, when 'declamatory
orations' were preserved, and history was treated as material more
or less well adapted to certain ends, whence arose a certain amount
of indifference toward its truth, so that Machiavelli, for instance,
deduced laws and precepts from the decades of Livy, not only assuming
them to be true, but accepting them in those parts which he must have
recognized to be demonstrably fabulous. Orations began to disappear,
but their disappearance was due to good literary taste rather than
to anything else, which recognized how out of harmony were those
expedients with the new popular, prosaic, polemical tone that narrative
assumed in the eighteenth century. In exchange they got something
worse: lack of esteem for history, which was considered to be an
inferior reality, unworthy of the philosopher, who seeks for laws, for
what is constant, for the uniform, the general, and can find it in
himself and in the direct observation of external and internal nature,
natural and human, without making that long, useless, and dangerous
tour of facts narrated in the histories. Descartes, Malebranche, and
the long list of their successors do not need especial mention here,
for it is well known how mathematics and naturalism dominated and
depressed history at this period. But was historical truth at least an
inferior truth? After fuller reflection, it did not seem possible to
grant even this. In history, said Voltaire, the word 'certain,' which
is used to designate such knowledge as that "two and two make four," "I
think," "I suffer," "I exist," should be used very rarely, and in the
sole sense of "very probable." Others held that even this was saying
too much, for they altogether denied the truth of history and declared
that it was a collection of fables, of inventions and equivocations, or
of undemonstrable affirmations. Hence the scepticism or Pyrrhonism of
the eighteenth century, which showed itself on several occasions and
has left us a series of curious little books as a document of itself.
Such is, indeed, the inevitable result when historical knowledge is
looked upon as a mass of individual testimonies, dictated or altered by
the passions, or misunderstood through ignorance, good at the best for
supplying edifying and terrible examples in confirmation of the eternal
truths of reason, which, for the rest, shine with their own light.

It would nevertheless be altogether erroneous to found upon the
exaggeration to which the theological and pragmatical views attained
in the historiography of the enlightenment, and see in it a decadence
or regression similar to that of the Renaissance and of other
predecessors. Not only were germs of error evolved at that time, not
only did the difficulties that had appeared in the previous period
become more acute, but there was also developed, and elevated to a
high degree of efficiency, that historiography of spiritual values
which Christian historiography had intensified and almost created, and
which the Renaissance had begun to transfer to the earth. Voltaire
as historiographer deserves to be defended (and this has recently
been done by several writers, admirably by Fueter), because he has
a lively perception of the need of bringing history back from the
treatment of the external to that of the internal and strives to
satisfy this need. For this reason, books that gave accounts of wars,
treaties, ceremonies, and solemnities seemed to him to be nothing but
'archives' or 'historical dictionaries,' useful for consultation on
certain occasions, but history, true history, he held to be something
altogether different. The duty of true history could not be to weight
the memory with external or material facts, or as he called them
events (événements), but to discover what was the society of men in
the past, _la société des hommes, comment on vivait dans l'intérieur
des familles, quels arts étaient cultivés,_ and to paint 'manners'
(_les mours_); not to lose itself in the multitude of insignificant
particulars (_petits faits_), but to collect only those that were of
importance (_considérables_) and to explain the spirit (_l'esprit_)
that had produced them. Owing to this preference that Voltaire accords
to manners over battles we find in him the conception (although it
remains without adequate treatment and gets lost in the ardour of
polemic) that it is not for history to trace the portrait of human
splendours and miseries (_les détails de la splendeur et de la misère
humaine_) but only of manners and of the arts, that is, of the
positive work; in his _Siècle de Louis XIV_ he says that he wishes to
illustrate the government of that monarch, not in so far as il a fait
du bien aux français, but in so far as il a fait du lien aux hommes.
What Voltaire undertook, and to no small extent achieved, forms the
principal object of all historians' labours at this period. Whoever
wishes to do so can see in Fueter's book how the great pictures
to be found in Voltaire's _Essai sur les mours_ and _Siècle_ were
imitated in the pages both of French writers and in those of other
European countries--for instance, in the celebrated introduction by
Robertson to his history of Charles V. It will also be noticed how the
special histories of this or that aspect of culture are multiplied
and perfected, as though several of the _desiderata_ mentioned by
Bacon in his classification of history had been thus supplied. The
history of philosophy abandons more and more the type of collections
of anecdotes and utterances of philosophers, to become the history
of systems, from Brucker to Buhle and to Tiedemann. The history of
art takes the shape of a special problem in Winckelmann's work and in
the works of his successors. In Voltaire's own books and in those of
his school it assumes that of literature; in those of Dubos and of
Montesquieu that of rights and of institutions; in Germany it leads to
the production of a work as original and realistic as the history of
Osnabrück by Möser. In the specialist work of Heeren, the history of
industry and commerce separates itself from the historical divisions
or digressions of economic treatises and takes a form of its own. The
history of social customs investigates (as in Sainte-Palaye's book
on _Ancienne chevalerie_) even the minutest aspects of social and
moral life. Had not Voltaire remarked about tournaments that _il se
fait des révolutions dans les plaisirs comme dans tout le reste?_ And
to limit ourselves to Italy, which at that time was also acting on
the initiative, though she soon afterward withdrew and received her
impulse from the other countries of Europe, it is well to remember
that in the eighteenth century Pietro Giannone, expressing the desires
and the attempts at their realization of a multitude of Neapolitan
compatriots and contemporaries, traced the civil history of the Kingdom
of Naples, giving much space to the relations between Church and State
and to the incidents of legislation. Many followed this example in
Italy and outside it (among the many were Montesquieu and Gibbon). In
Italy, too, Ludovico Antonio Muratori illustrated medieval life in
his _Antiquitates Italiæ,_ and Tiraboschi composed a great history of
Italian literature (understood as that of the whole culture of Italy),
notable not less for its erudition than for its clearness of design,
while other lesser writers, like Napoli Signorelli, in his _Vicende
della cultura delle due Sicilie_, particularized in certain regions,
sprinkling their history with the philosophy current at the time. The
Jesuit Bettinelli, too, imitated the historical books of Voltaire
for the history of letters, arts, and customs in Italy, Bonafede the
work of Brucker for the history of philosophy, and Lanzi, in a manner
far superior to those just mentioned, continued the path followed by
Winckelmann in his _History of Painting._

Not only did the historiography of the enlightenment render history
more 'interior' and develop it in its interiority, but it also
broadened it in space and time. Here too Voltaire represents in an
eminent degree the needs of his age, with his continual accusations of
narrowness and meanness levelled at the traditional image of universal
history, as composed of Hebrew or sacred history and Græco-Roman or
profane history, or, as he says, _histoires prétendues universelles,
fabriquées dans notre Occident._ A beginning was made with the use of
the material discovered, transported, and accumulated by explorers and
travellers from the Renaissance onward, of which a considerable part
had been contributed by the Jesuits and by missionaries. India and
China attracted attention, both on account of their antiquity and of
the high grade of civilization to which they had attained. Translations
of religious and literary Oriental texts were soon added to this,
and it became possible to discuss that civilization, not merely at
second-hand and according to the narratives of travellers. This
increase of knowledge relating to the East is paralleled by increase
of knowledge not only in relation to antiquity (these studies were
never dropped, but changed their centre, first from Italy to France
and Holland, then to England, and then to Germany), but also in regard
to the Middle Ages, in the works of the Benedictines, of Leibnitz,
Muratori, and very many others, who here also specialized both as
regards the objects of their researches and as to the regions or cities
in which they conducted them, as for instance De Meo in his _Annali
critici del Regno di Napoli._

With the increase of erudition, of the variety of documents and
information available, went hand in hand a more refined criticism as
to the authenticity of the one and of the value as evidence of the
other. Fueter does well to note the progress in method accomplished by
the Benedictines and by Leibnitz (who did not surpass those excellent
and learned monks in this respect, although he was a philosopher) up
to Muratori, who did not restrict himself to testing the genuineness
of tradition, but initiated criticism of the tendencies of individual
witnesses, of the interests and passions which colour and give
their shape to narratives. The en-lightened, with Voltaire at their
head, initiated another kind of criticism of a more intrinsic sort,
directed to things and to the knowledge of things (to literary, moral,
political, and military experience), recognizing the impossibility
that things should have happened in the way that they are said to have
happened by superficial, credulous, or prejudiced historians, and
attempting to reconstruct them in the only way that they could have
happened. We shall admire in Voltaire (especially in the _Siècle_) his
lack of confidence in the reports of courtiers and servants, accustomed
to forge calumnies and to interpret maliciously and anecdotically the
external actions of sovereigns and statesmen.

This happened because the historiography of the enlightenment, while
it preserved and even exaggerated pragmatism, yet on the other
hand refined and spiritualized it, as will have been observed in
the expressions preferred by Voltaire and even in the theologizing
Bossuet: _l'esprit des nations, l'esprit du temps._ What that _esprit_
was naturally remained vague, because the support of philosophy,
in which at that time those newly imported concepts introduced an
unexpected element of conflict, was lacking to refer it to the ideal
determinations of the spirit in its development and to conceive the
various epochs and the various nations as each playing its own part in
the spiritual drama. Thus it often happened that _esprit_ was perverted
into a fixed quality, such as _race_, if it were a question of nations,
and into a current or mode, if periods were spoken of, and was thus
naturalized and pragmatized. _Trois choses,_ wrote Voltaire, _influent
sans cesse sur l'esprit des hommes, le climat, le gouvernement, et
la religion: c'est la seule manière d'expliquer l'énigme du monde:_
where the 'spirit' is lowered to the position of a product of natural,
and social circumstances. The suggestive word had, however, been
pronounced, and a clear consciousness of the terms themselves of the
social, political, and cultural struggle that was being carried on
would have little by little emerged. For the time being, climate,
government, religion, genius of the peoples, genius of the time, were
all more or less happy attempts to go beyond pragmatism and to place
causality in a universal order. This effort, and at the same time its
limit--that is to say, the falling back into the abstract and pragmatic
form of explanation--is also shown in the doctrine of the 'single
event,' which was believed to determine at a stroke the new epoch of
barbarism or of civilization. Thus at this time it was customary to
assign enormous importance to the Crusades or to the Turkish occupation
of Constantinople, as Fueter records, with special reference to
Richardson's history. Another consequence of the same embarrassment
was the slight degree of fusion attained in the various histories of
culture, of customs, and of the arts that were composed it this time.
The various manifestations of life were set down one after the other
without any success, or even any attempt at developing them organically.

Doubtless the new and vigorous historiographical tendencies of the
enlightenment were then attacking other barriers opposed to them by
the already mentioned lay-theological dualism, in addition to those of
pragmatism and of naturalism. This lay-theology ended by negating the
principle of development itself, because the judgment of the past as
consisting of darkness and errors precluded any serious conception of
religion, poetry, philosophy, or of primitive and bygone institutions.
What did an institution of the great importance of 'divination' in
primitive civilizations amount to for Voltaire in the formative process
of observation and scientific deduction? The invention _du premier
fripon qui rencontra un imbécile._ Or oracles, also of such importance
in the life of antiquity? _Des fourberies._ To what amounted the
theological struggles between Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists
in connexion with the Eucharist? To the ridiculous spectacle of the
Papists _who mangeaient Dieu pour pain, les luthériens du pain et Dieu,
les calvinistes mangèrent le pain et ne mangèrent point Dieu._ What
was the only end that could be attained by the Jansenists? Boredom: a
sequence of tiresome _querelles théologiques_ and of petty querelles
de plume, so that nothing remains of the writers of that time who took
part in them but geometry, reasoned grammar, logic--that is to say,
only what _appartient à la raison; the querelles théologiques were
une maladie de plus dans l'esprit humain._ Nor does the philosophy
of earlier times receive better treatment. That of Plato was nothing
but _une mauvaise métaphysique,_ a tissue of arguments so bad that
it seems impossible they could have been admired and added to by
others yet more extravagant from century to century, until Locke was
reached: Locke, _qui seul a développé l'entendement humain dans un
livre où il n'y a que des vérités, et, ce qui rend l'ouvrage parfait,
toutes les vérités sont claires._ In poetry, modern work was placed
above ancient, the Gerusalemme above the Iliad, the Orlando above the
Odyssey, Dante seems obscure and awkward, Shakespeare a barbarian not
without talent. Medieval literature was beneath consideration: _On a
recueilli quelques malheureuses compositions de ce temps: c'est faire
un amas de cailloux tirés dantiques masures quand on est entouré de
palais._ Frederick of Prussia, who here showed himself a consistent
Voltairean, did not receive the new edition of the Nibelungenlied and
the other epic monuments of Germany graciously. In a word, the whole
of the past lost its value, or preserved only the negative value
of evil: _Que les citoyens d'une ville immense, où les arts, les
plaisirs, et la paix régnent aujourd'hui, où la raison même commence à
s'introduire, comparent les temps, et qu'ils se plaignent, s'ils osent.
C'est une réflexion qu'il faut faire presque à chaque page de cette
histoire._ The lack of the conception of development rendered sterile
the very acquisition of knowledge of distant things and people; and
although there was in certain respects merit in introducing India and
China into universal history, and although the criticism and satire
of the 'four monarchies' and of 'sacred' history was to a certain
extent justified, it is well to remember that in the notion mocked at
was satisfied the legitimate need for understanding history in its
relations with Christian and European civilized life; and that if it
had not been found possible (and it never was at that time) to form a
more complete chain, in which were Arabia, India and China, and the
American civilizations, and all the other newly discovered things,
these additional contributions to knowledge would have remained a mere
object for curiosity or imagination. India, China, and the East in
general were therefore of little more use in the eighteenth century
than to manifest an affection for tolerance, indeed for religious
indifferentism. Those distant countries, in which there was no
proselytizing frenzy, and which did not send missionaries to weary
Europe--though Europe did not spare them such visitations--were not
treated as historical realities, nor did they obtain their place in
the reality of spiritual development, but became longed-for ideals,
countries of dream. Those who in our day renew praises of Asiatic
toleration, contrasting it with European intolerance, and wax tender
over such wisdom and meekness, are not aware that in so doing they
are repeating uselessly and inopportunely what Voltaire has already
done; and if in this matter he did not aid the better understanding
of history, he at any rate fulfilled a practical and moral function
which was necessary for the conditions of his own time. The defective
conception of development, and not accidental circumstances, such as
the publicistic, journalistic, and literary tendencies of the original
among those historians, is also the profound reason for the failure of
contact and of union between the immense mass of erudition accumulated
by the sixteenth century philologists, and the historiography of the
enlightenment. How were those documents and collections to be employed
in the slow and laborious development of the spirit, if, according to
the new conception, instead of developing, the spirit was to leap, and
had indeed already made a great leap and left the past far behind? It
was sufficient to rummage from time to time among them and extract some
curious detail, which should fit in with the polemic of the moment.
_C'est un vaste magasin, où vous prendrez ce qui est à votre usage,_
said Voltaire. Thus the learned and the enlightened, both of them
children of their time, remained divided among themselves, the former
incapable of rising to the level of history owing to their slight
vivacity of spirit, the latter overrunning it owing to their too great
vivacity, and reducing it to a form of journalism.

All these limits, just because they are limits, assign its proper
sphere to the historiography of the enlightenment, but they must
not be taken as meaning that it had not made any progress. That
historiography, plunged in the work at the moment most urgent,
surrounded with the splendour of the truths that it was in the act
of revealing around it, failed to see those limits and its own
deficiencies, or saw them rarely and with difficulty. It was aware only
that it progressed and progressed rapidly, nor was it wrong in this
belief. Nor are those critics (among whom is Fueter) wrong who now
defend it from the bad reputation that has befallen it and celebrate
its many virtues, which we also have set in a clear light and have
added to, and whose connexion and unity we have proved. Yet we must
not leave that bad reputation unexplained, for it sounds far more
serious than the usual depreciation by every historical period of the
one that has preceded it, with the view of showing its inferiority
to the present. Here, on the contrary, we find a particular judgment
of depreciation, pronounced even by comparison with the periods
that preceded the enlightenment, so that this period, and not, for
example, the Renaissance, has especially received the epithet of
'anti-historical' ("the anti-historical eighteenth century"). We find
the explanation of this when we think of the dissipation then taking
place of all symbolical veils, received from _venerable antiquity,_ and
of the crude dualism and conflict which were being instigated at that
time between history and religion. The Renaissance was also itself an
affirmation of human reason, but at the moment of its breaking with
medieval tradition it was felt to be all the same tied to classical
tradition, which gave it an appearance of historical consciousness (an
appearance and not the reality). The philosophers of the Renaissance
often invoked and placed themselves under the protection of the
ancient philosophers, Plato against Aristotle, or the Greek Aristotle
against the Aristotle of the commentators. The lettered men of the
period sought to justify the new works of art and the new judgments
upon them by appealing to the precepts of antiquity, although they
sophisticated and subtilized what they found there. Philosophers,
artists, and critics turned their shoulders upon antiquity only when
and where no sort of conciliation was possible, and it was only the
boldest among them who ventured to do even this. The ancient republics
were taken as an example by the politicians, with Livy as their text,
as the Bible was by the Christians. Religion, which was exhausted or
had been extinguished in the souls of the cultured, was of necessity
preserved for the people as an instrument of government, a vulgar form
of philosophy: almost all are agreed as to this, from Machiavelli to
Bruno. The sage legislator or the 'prince' of Machiavelli and the
enlightened despot of Voltaire, who were both of them idealizations
of the absolute monarchies that had moulded Europe politically to
their will, have substantial affinities; but the sixteenth-century
politician, expert in human weaknesses and charged with all the
experience of the rich history of Greece and of Rome, studied finesse
and transactions, where the enlightened man of the eighteenth century,
encouraged by the ever renewed victories of the _Reason,_ raised
Reason's banner, and for her took his sword from the scabbard, without
feeling the smallest necessity for covering his face with a mask. King
Numa created a religion in order to deceive the people, and was praised
for it by Machiavelli; but Voltaire would have abused him for doing
so, as he abused all inventors of dogmas and promoters of fanaticism.
What more is to be said? The rationalism of the Renaissance was
especially the work of the Italian genius, so well balanced, so careful
to avoid excesses, so accommodating, so artistic; enlightenment, which
was especially the work of the French genius, was radical, consequent,
apt to run into extremes, logistical.

When the genius of the two countries and the two epochs is compared,
the enlightenment is bound to appear anti-historical with respect
to the Renaissance, which, owing to the comparison thus drawn and
instituted with such an object, becomes endowed with a historical
sense and with a sense of development which it did not possess, having
also been essentially rationalistic and anti-historical, and, in a
certain sense, more so than the enlightenment. I say more than the
enlightenment, not only because the latter, as I have shown, greatly,
increased historical knowledge and ideas, but also precisely because it
caused all the contradictions latent in the Renaissance to break out.
This was an apparent regression in historical knowledge, but in reality
it was an addition to life, and therefore to historical consciousness
itself, as we clearly see immediately afterward. The triumph and
the catastrophe of the enlightenment was the French Revolution; and
this was at the same time the triumph and the catastrophe of its
historiography.




VI


THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM


The reaction manifested itself with the sentimental return to the past,
and with the defence undertaken by the politicians of old institutions
worthy of being preserved or accorded new life. Hence arose two forms
of historical representation, which certainly belong in a measure to
all periods, but which were very vigorous at the romantic period:
_nostalgic_ historiography and historiography which _restored._ And
since the past of their desires, which supplied the material for
practical recommendations, was just that which the enlightenment
and the Revolution had combated and overthrown--the Middle Ages and
everything that resembled or seemed to resemble the Middle Ages--both
kinds of history were, so to say, medievalized. Just as a watercourse
which has been forcibly diverted from its natural bed noisily returns
to it as soon as obstructions are removed, so a great sigh of joy and
satisfaction, a warm emotion of tenderness, welled up in and reanimated
all breasts as, after so long a rationalistic ascesis, they again took
to themselves the old religion, the old national customs, regional and
local, again entered the old houses and castles and cathedrals, sang
again the old songs, dreamed again the old legends. In this tumult of
sentiment we do not at first observe the profound and irremediable
change that has taken place in the souls of all, borne witness to
by the anxiety, the emotion, the pathos of that apparent return. It
would be to belittle the nostalgic historiography of the romantic
movement to make it consist of certain special literary works, for in
reality it penetrated all or almost all the writings of that time, like
an irresistible current, to be found not only in lesser and poorer
spirits, such as De Barante, nor only in the more poetically disposed,
such as Chateaubriand, but in historians who present some of the most
important or purely scientific thoughts, for example Niebuhr. The life
of chivalry, the life of the cloister, the Crusades, the Hohenstaufen,
the Lombard and Flemish communes, the Christian kings of Spain at
strife with the Arabs, the Arabs themselves, England divided between
Saxons and Normans, the Switzerland of William Tell, the _chansons
de geste,_ the songs of the troubadours, _Gothic_ architecture
(characteristic vicissitude of a name, applied in contempt and then
turned into a symbol of affection), became at this time the object of
universal and national sympathy, as did the rough, ingenuous popular
literature, poetry, and art: translations or abbreviations of the
medieval chronicles were even reprinted for the enjoyment of a large
and eager circle of readers; the first medieval museums were formed;
an attempt was made to restore and complete ancient churches, castles,
and city palaces. Historiography entered into close relations and
exchange of ideas with the new literary form of historical romance,
which expressed the same nostalgia, first with Walter Scott and then
with his innumerable followers in all countries. (This literary form
was therefore quite different from the historical fiction of Manzoni,
which is free from such sentiment and whose historical element has a
moral foundation.) I have already remarked that this nostalgia was
far more modern of content than at first supposed; so much so that
every one was attracted to it by the motive that most appealed to
himself, whether religious or political, Old Catholic, mystical,
monarchical, constitutional, communal-republican, national-independent,
liberal-democratic, or aristocratic. Nevertheless, when the past was
taken as a poetic theme, there was a risk that the idealizing tendency
of the images would be at strife with critical reflection: hence the
cult of the Middle Ages, which had become a superstition, came to a
ridiculous end. Fueter quotes an acute remark of Ranke, relating to one
of the last worthy representatives of the romantic school, Giesebrecht,
author of the History of the German Empire, admirer and extoller of
the 'Christian-Germanic virtues,' of the power and excellence of the
medieval heroes. Ranke described all this as "at once too virile and
too puerile." But the puerility discernible at the sources of this
ideal current, before it falls into the comic, is rather the sublime
puerility of the poet's dream.

The actual modern motives, which present themselves as sentiments in
nostalgic historiography, acquired a reflex form with the same or
other writers, as tendencies to the service of which their narratives
were bent. Here, too, it would be superfluous to give an account of
all the various forms and specifications of these tendencies (which
Fueter has already done admirably), from the persistent Rousseauism
of Giovanni Müller to Sismondi, or from the ideal of a free peasantry
of Niebuhr, the ultramontane ideal of Leo, the imperialistic-medieval
ideal of the already mentioned Giesebrecht and Ficker, the old liberal
of Raumer, the neo-liberal of Rotteck and Gervinus, the anglicizing
of Guizot and Dahlmann, or the democratic ideal of Michelet, to
the neo-Guelfish ideal of Troya and Balbo and Father Tosti, to the
Prussian hegemony of Droysen and of Treitschke, and so on. But all of
these, and other historians with a particular bias, lean, with rare
exceptions, on the past, and find the justification of their bias in
the dialectic of tradition or in tradition itself. Nobody any longer
cared to compose by the light of abstract reason alone. The extreme
typical instance is afforded by the socialistic school, which took the
romantic form in the person of its chief representative, Marx, who
endowed it with historiographical and scientific value. His work was
in complete opposition to the socialistic ideals that had appeared in
the eighteenth century, and he therefore boasted that they had passed
from the state of being a Utopia to that of a science. His science
was nothing less than historical necessity attributed to the new era
that he prophesied, and materialism itself no longer wished to be the
naturalistic materialism of a d'Holbach or a Helvétius, but presented
itself as 'historical materialism.'

If nostalgic historiography is poetry and that with a purpose is
practical and political, the historiography, the true historiography,
of romanticism is not to be placed in either of the two, in so far as
it is considered an epoch in the history of thought. Certainly, poetry
and practice arose from a thought and led to a thought as its material
or problem: the French Revolution was certainly not the cause or the
effect of a philosophy, but both the cause and the effect, a philosophy
in the act, born from and generating the life that was then developed.
But thought in the form of thought, and not in the form of sentimental
love of the past or effort to revive a false past, is what determines
the scientific character of that historiography, which we desire to set
in a clear light. And it reacted in the form of thought against the
thought of the enlightenment, so crudely dualistic, by opposing to it
the conception of development.

Not indeed that this concept was something entirely new, which had then
burst forth in bud for the first time: no speculative conception that
is really such can be absent at one time and appear at another. The
difference lies in this, that at a given period scientific problems
seem to apply to one rather than to another aspect of thought, which
is always present in its totality. So that when we say that the
conception of development was absent from antiquity and from the
eighteenth century, we utter a hyperbole. There are good reasons for
this hyperbole, but it remains a hyperbole and should not be taken
literally and understood materially. Nor are we to believe that there
was no suspicion or anticipation of the important scientific conception
of development prior to the romantic period. Traces of it may be found
in the pantheism of the great philosophers of the Renaissance, and
especially in Bruno, and in mysticism itself, in so far as it included
pantheism, and yet more distinctly in the reconstruction of the bare
bones of the theological conception with the conception of the course
of historical events as a gradual education of the human race, in
which the successive revelations should be the communication of books
of a gradually less and less elementary nature, from the first Hebrew
scriptures to the Gospels and to the revisions of the Gospels. Lessing
offers an example of this. Nor were the theorists of the enlightenment
always so terribly dualistic as those that I have mentioned, but here
and there one of them, such as Turgot, although he did not altogether
abandon the presupposition as to epochs of decadence, yet recognized
the progress of Christianity over antiquity and of modern times over
Christianity, and attempted even to trace the line of development
passing through the three ages, the mythological, the metaphysical,
and the scientific. Other thinkers, like Montesquieu, noticed the
relativity of institutions to customs and to periods; others, like
Rousseau, attached great importance to the strength of sentiment.
Enlightenment had also its adversaries during its own period, not
only as represented by political abstraction and fatuous optimism
(such as that of Galiani, for instance), but also in more important
respects, destined later to form the special subject of criticism,
such as contempt for tradition, for religion, and for poetry and arid
naturalism. Hence the smile of Hamann at the blind faith of Voltaire
and of Hume in the Newtonian astronomical doctrines and at their lack
of sense for moral doctrines. He held that a revival of poetry and
a linking of it with history were necessary, and considered history
to be (here he was just the opposite of Bodin) not the easiest but
the most difficult of all mental labours. But in the _Scienza nuova_
of Vico (1725) was to be found a very rich and organic anticipation
of romantic thought (as should now be universally recognized and
known). Vico criticized the enlightenment only in its beginnings (when
it was still only natural jurisprudence and Cartesianism), yet he
nevertheless penetrated more deeply than others who came after him
into its hidden motives and measured more accurately its logical and
practical consequences. Thus he opposed to the superficial contempt
for the past in the name of abstract reason the unfolding of the human
mind in history, as sense, imagination, and intellect, as the divine
or animal age, the heroic age, and the human age. He held further
that no human age was in the wrong, for each had its own strength and
beauty, and each was the effect of its predecessor and the necessary
preparation for the one to follow, aristocracy for democracy, democracy
for monarchy, each one appearing at the right moment, or as the justice
of that moment.

The conception of development did not, however, in the romantic
period, remain the thought of a solitary thinker without an audience,
but broadened until it became a general conviction; it did not
appear timidly shadowed forth, or contradictorily affirmed, but took
on body, coherence, and vigour, and dominated spirits. It is the
formative principle of the idealist philosophy, which culminated in
the system of Hegel. Few there were who resisted its strength, and
these, like Herbart, were still shut up in pre-Kantian dogmatism,
or tried to resist it and are more or less tinged with it, as is
the case with Schopenhauer and yet more with Comte and later with
positivistic evolutionism. It gives its intellectual backbone to the
whole of historiography (with the exception here too of lingerers and
reactionaries), and that historiography corrects for it, in greater or
less measure, the same one-sided tendencies which came to it from the
sentimental and political causes already described, from tenderness for
the near past or for "the good old times," and for the Middle Ages.
The whole of history is now understood as necessary development, and
is therefore implicitly, and more or less explicitly, all redeemed; it
is all learned with the feeling that it is sacred, a feeling reserved
in the Middle Ages for those parts of it only which represented the
opposition of God to the power of the devil. Thus the conception of
development was extended to classical antiquity, and then, with the
increase of knowledge and of attention, to Oriental civilizations.
Thus the Romans, the Ionians, the Dorians, the Egyptians, and the
Indians got back their life and were justified and loved in their
turn almost as much as the world of chivalry and the Christian world
had been loved. But the logical extension of the conception did not
find any obstacle among the philosophers and historians, even in the
repugnance that was felt for the times to which modern times were
opposed, such as the eighteenth century. The spectacle was witnessed
of the consecration of Jacobinism and of the French Revolution in
the very books of their adversaries, Hegel, for instance, finding in
those events both the triumph and the death, the one not less than the
other, the 'triumphant death' of the modern abstract subjectivity,
inaugurated by Descartes. Not only did the adversaries, but also the
executioners and their victims, make peace, and Socrates, the martyr of
free thought and the victim of intolerance, such as he was understood
to be by the intellectualists of the eighteenth century and those who
superstitiously repeat them in our own day, was condemned to the death
that he had well deserved, in the name of History, which does not admit
of spiritual revolutions without tragedies. The drafter, too, of the
_Manifesto of the Communists,_ as he was hastening on the business of
putting an end to the burgess class, both with his prayers and with
his works, gave vent to a warm and grandiose eulogium of the work
achieved by the burgess class, and in so doing showed himself to be the
faithful child of romantic thought; because, for anyone who held to the
ideology of the eighteenth century, capitalism and the burgess class
should have appeared to be nothing but distortions due to ignorance,
stupidity, and egoism, unworthy of any praise beyond a funeral
oration. The passions of the greater part of those historians were
most inflammable, not less than those of the enlightened, yet satire,
sarcasm, invective, at least among the superior intellects, vividly
encircled the historical understanding of the time, but did not oppress
or negate it. The general impression experienced from those narratives
is that of a serious effort to render justice to all, and we owe it to
the discipline thus imparted to the minds and souls of the thinkers
and historians of romanticism that it is only the least cultivated or
most fanatical among the priests and Catholics in general who continue
to curse Voltaire and the eighteenth century as the work of the devil.
In the same way, it is only vulgar democrats and anti-clericals,
akin to the former in their anachronism and the rest, who treat the
reaction, the restoration, and the Middle Ages with equal grossness.
Enlightenment and the Jacobinism connected with it was a religion,
as we have shown, and when it died it left behind it survivals or
superstitions.

To conceive history as development is to conceive it as history of
ideal values, the only ones that have value, and it was for this
reason that in the romantic period there was an ever increasing
multiplication of those histories which had already increased to so
considerable an extent in the preceding period. But their novelty did
not consist in their external multiplication, but in their internal
maturation, which corrected those previously composed, consisting
either of learned collections of disconnected items of information, or
judgments indeed, but judgments based upon an external model, which
claimed to be constructed by pure reason and was in reality constructed
by arbitrary and capricious abstraction and imagination. And now the
history of poetry and of literature is no longer measured according
to the standard of the Roman-humanistic ideal, or according to the
classical ideal of the age of Louis XIV, or of the ratiocinative and
prosaic ideal of the eighteenth century, but discovers by degrees
its own measure in itself, and beginning with the first attempts of
Herder, of the Schlegels, and then of Villemain, of Sainte-Beuve, and
of Gervinus, and for antiquity of Wolf and Müller, finally reaches
the high standard represented by the _History of Italian Literature_
of de Sanctis. Suddenly the history of art feels itself embarrassed
by the too narrow ideal of Lessing and of Winckelmann, and there is
a movement toward colour, toward landscape, toward pre-Hellenic and
post-Hellenic art, toward the romantic, the Gothic, the Renaissance,
and the baroque, a movement that extends from Meyer and Hirth to
Rumohr, Kluger, Schnaase, till it reaches Burckhardt and Ruskin. It
also tries here and there to break down the barriers of the schools and
to attain the really artistic personality of the artists. The history
of philosophy has its great crisis with Hegel, who leads it from the
abstract subjectivism of the followers of Kant to objectivity, and
recognizes the only true existence of philosophy to consist of the
history of thought, considered in its entirety, without neglecting any
one of its forms. Zeller, Fischer, and Erdmann in Germany, Cousin and
his school in France, Spaventa in Italy, follow Hegel in such objective
research. The like takes place in the history of religion, which tries
to adopt intrinsic criteria of judgment, after Spittler and Planck, the
last representatives of the rationalistic school, with Marheinecke,
Neander, Hase, and finds a peculiarly scientific form with Strauss,
Baur, and the Tübingen school; and from Eichhorn to Savigny, Gans, and
Lassalle in the history of rights. The conception of the State always
yields the leadership more and more to that of the nation in the
history called political, and 'nationality' substitutes the names of
'humanity,' 'liberty,' and 'equality,' and all the other ideas of the
preceding age that once were full of radiance, but are now dimmed. This
nationalism has wrongly been looked upon as a regression, in respect
of that universalism and cosmopolitanism, because (notwithstanding
its well-known sentimental exaggerations) it notably assists the
concrete conception of the universal living only in its historical
creations, such as nations, which are both products and factors of its
development. And the value of Europeanism is revived as the result
of this acquisition of consciousness of the value of nations. It had
been too much trampled upon during the period of the enlightenment,
owing to the naturalistic spirit which dominated at that time, and to
the reaction taking place against the historical schemes of antiquity
and Christianity, although it was surely evident that history written
by Europeans could not but be 'Europocentric,' and that it is only in
relation to the course of Græco-Roman civilization, which was Christian
and Occidental, that the civilizations developed along other lines
become actual and comprehensible to us, provided always that we do
not wish to change history into an exhibition of the different types
of civilization, with a prize for the best of them The difference is
also made clear for the same reason between history and pre-history,
between the history of man and the history of nature, which had been
illegitimately linked by the materialists and the naturalists. This is
to be found even in the works of Herder, who retains a good many of
the elements of the century of his birth mingled with those of the new
period. But it is above all in romantic historiography that we observe
the search for and very often the happy realization of an organic
linking together of all particular histories of spiritual values, by
relating religious, philosophical, poetical, artistic, juridical, and
moral facts as a function of a single motive of development. It then
becomes a commonplace that a literature cannot be understood without
understanding ideas and customs, or politics without philosophy, or
(as was realized rather later) rights and customs and ideas without
economy. And it is worth while recording as we pass by that there is
hardly one of these histories of values which has not been previously
presented or sketched by Vico, together with the indication of their
intrinsic unity. Histories of poetry, histories of myth, of rights, of
languages, of constitutions, of explicative or philosophical reason,
all are in Vico, although sometimes wrapped up in the historical
or sociological epoch with which each one of them was particularly
connected. Even modern biography (which illustrates what the individual
does and suffers in relation to the mission which he fulfils and to the
aspect of the Idea which becomes actual in him) has its first or one of
its first notable monuments in the autobiography of Vico--that is to
say, in the history of the works which Providence commanded and guided
him to accomplish "in diverse ways that seemed to be obstacles, but
were opportunities."

This transformation of biography does not imply failure to recognize
individuality, but is, on the contrary, its elevation, for it finds
its true meaning in its relation with the universal, as the universal
its concreteness in the individual. And indeed individualizing power,
perception of physiognomies, of states of the soul, of the various
forms of the ideas, sense of the differences of times and places,
may be said to show themselves for the first time in romantic
historiography. That is to say, they do not show themselves rarely or
as by accident, nor any longer in the negative and summary form of
opposition between new and old, civil and barbarous, patriotic and
extraneous. It does not mean anything that some of those historians
lost themselves (though this happened rarely) in an abstract dialectic
of ideas, and that others more frequently allowed ideas to be submerged
in the external picturesqueness of customs and anecdotes, because we
find exaggerations, one-sidedness, lack of balance, at all periods and
in all progress of thought. Nor is the accusation of great importance
that the colouring of times and places preferred by the romantics
was false, because the important thing was precisely this attempt to
colour, whether the result were happy or the reverse (if the latter,
the picture had to be coloured again, but always coloured). A further
reason for this is that, as has been already admitted, there were
fancies and tendencies at work in romanticism beyond true and proper
historiography, which bestowed upon the times and places illustrated
that imaginary and exaggerated colouring suggested by the various
sentiments and interests. History, which is thought, was sometimes
idealized at this period as an imaginary living again in the past, and
people asked of history to be carried back into the old castles and
market-places of the Middle Ages; for their enjoyment they asked to
see the personages of the time in their own proper clothes and as they
moved about, to hear them speak the language, with the accent of the
time, to be made contemporary with the facts and to acquire them with
the ingenuous spirit of a contemporary. But to do this is not only
impossible for thought, but also for art, because art too surpasses
life, and it would be something useless, because it is not desired,
for what man really desires is to reproduce in imagination and to
rethink the past _from the present,_ not to tear himself away from the
present and fall back into the dead past. Certainly this last was an
illusion, proper to several romantics (who for that matter have their
successors in our own day), and in so far as it was an illusion either
remained a sterile effort or diffused itself in a lyrical sigh; but
an illusion of that kind was one of many aspects and did not form an
essential part of romantic historiography.

We also owe it to romanticism that a relation was established for
the first time and a fusion effected between the learned and the
historians, between those who sought out material and thinkers. This,
as we have said, had not happened in the eighteenth century, nor,
to tell the truth, before it, in the great epochs of erudition of
Italian or Alexandrian humanism, for then antiquaries and politicians
each followed their own path, indifferent to one another, and the
only political ideal that sometimes gleamed from the bookshelves of
the antiquary (as Fueter acutely observes of Flavius Blondus) was
that of a government which by ensuring calm should permit the learned
to follow their peaceful avocations! But the watchword of romantic
historiography was anticipated in respect to this matter also by Vico,
in his formula of the _union_ of _philosophy_ with _philology,_ and of
the reciprocal _conversion_ of the _true_ with the _certain,_ of the
idea with the fact. This formula proves (we give it passing mention)
that the historical saying of Manzoni, to the effect that Vico should
be united with Muratori, was not altogether historically exact--that
is to say, philosophy with erudition, for Vico had already united
these two things, and their union constitutes the chief value of his
work. Nevertheless, notwithstanding its inaccuracy, the saying of
Manzoni also proves how romantic historiography had noted the intimate
connexion that prevails between erudition and thought in history,
which is the living and thinking again of the document that has been
preserved or restored by erudition, and indeed demands erudition that
it may be sought out and prepared. Neither did romanticism limit
itself to stating this claim in the abstract, but really created the
type of the philologist-thinker (who was sometimes also a poet), from
Niebuhr to Mommsen, from Thierry to Fustel de Coulanges, from Troya
to Balbo or Tosti. Then for the first time were the great collections
and repertories of the erudition of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries valued at their true worth; then were new collections
promoted, supplementary to or correcting them according to criteria
that were ever more rigorous in relation to the subject and to the
greater knowledge and means at disposal. Thus arose the work known
as the _Monumenta Germania historica_ and the German philological
school (which was once the last and became the first), the one a model
of undertakings of this sort, the other of the disciplines relating
to them, for the rest of Europe. The philological claim of the new
historiography, aided by the sentiment of nationality, also gave life
in our Italy to those historical societies, to those collections of
chronicles, of laws, of charters, of 'historical archives' or reviews,
institutions with which historiographical work is concerned in our day.
A notable example of the power to promote the most patient philology
inspired with purely historical needs is to be found, among others, in
the _Corpus inscriptionum latinarum,_ conceived and carried out by a
historian endowed with the passionate energy and the synthetic mind of
a Mommsen. In the eighteenth century (with one or two very rare and
partial exceptions) historians disdained parchment and in-folios, or
opened them impatiently, _bibentes et fugientes_ but in the nineteenth
century no serious spirit dared to affirm any longer that it was
possible to compose history without accurate, scrupulous, meticulous
study of the documents upon which it is to be founded.

The pragmatic histories of the last centuries, therefore, melted
away at the simple touch of these new historiographical convictions,
rather than owing to direct and open criticism or polemic. The
word 'pragmatic,' which used to be a title of honour, began to be
pronounced with a tinge of contempt, to designate an inadequate form
of historical thought, and the historians of the enlightenment fell
into discredit, not only Voltaire and the French, but the Humes, the
Robertsons, and other English historians. They appeared now to be quite
without colour, lacking in historical sense, their minds fixed only
on the political aspect of things, superficial, vainly attempting to
explain great events by the intentions of individuals and by means of
little things or single details. The theory, too, of history as the
orator and teacher of virtue and prudential maxims also disappeared.
This theory had enjoyed a long and vigorous life during Græco-Roman
antiquity and again from the Renaissance onward (when I say that all
these things disappeared, the exception of the fossils is always to
be understood, for these persisted at that time and persist in our
own day, with the air of being alive). The attitude of the Christian
spirit toward history was resumed. This spirit contemplates it as
a single process, which does not repeat itself, as the work of
God, which teaches directly by means of His presence, not as matter
that exemplifies abstract teaching, extraneous to itself. The word
'pragmatic' was indeed pronounced with a smile from that time onward,
as were the formulas of _historia magister vitæ_ or that directed _ad
bene beateque vivendum_: let him who will believe these formulas--that
is to say, he who echoes traditional thoughts without rethinking them
and is satisfied with traditional and vulgar conceptions. What is the
use of history? "History itself," was the answer, and truly that is not
a little thing.

The new century glorified itself with the title of 'the century of
history,' owing to its new departures, which were born or converged
in one. It had deified and at the same time humanized history, as had
never been done before, and had made of it a centre of reality and of
thought. That title of honour should be confirmed, if not to the whole
of the nineteenth century, then to its romantic or idealistic period.
But this confirmation should not prevent our observing, with equal
clearness, the _limit_ of that historicity, without which it would not
be possible to understand its later and further advance. History was
then at once deified and humanized; but did the divinity and humanity
truly flow together in one, or was there not at bottom some separation
between the two of them? Was the disagreement between ancient worldly
thought and ultramundane Christian thought really healed, or did it not
present itself again in a new form, though this form was attenuated and
more critical intellectually? And which of the two elements prevailed
in this disagreement in its abstractness, the human or rather the
divine?

These questions suggest the answer, which is further suggested by
a memory familiar to all, namely, that the romantic period was not
only the splendid age of the great evolutionary histories, but also
the fatal age of the _philosophies of history,_ the transcendental
histories. And indeed, although the thought of immanence had grown
gradually more and more rich and profound during the Renaissance and
the enlightenment, and that of transcendency ever more evanescent,
the first had not for that reason absorbed the second in itself,
but had merely purified and rationalized it, as Hellenic philosophy
and Christian theology had tried to do in their own ways in their
own times. In the romantic period, purification and rationalization
continue, and here was the mistake as well as the merit of romanticism,
for it was no longer a question of setting right that ancient opinion,
but of radically inverting and remaking it. The transcendental
conception of history was no longer at that time called revelation
and apocalypse, but _philosophy of history,_ a title taken from the
enlightenment (principally from Voltaire), although it no longer had
the meaning formerly attributed to it of history examined with an
unprejudiced or philosophical spirit adorned with moral and political
reflections, but the meaning, altogether different, of a philosophical
search of the sphere above or below that of history--in fact, of
a theological search, which remained theological, however lay or
speculative it may have been. And since a search of this sort always
leads to a rationalized mythology, there is no reason why the name of
'mythology' should not be extended to the philosophy of history, or
the name of 'philosophy of history,' to mythology, as I have extended
it, calling all transcendental conceptions of history 'philosophy of
history,' for they all separate the fact and the idea, the event and
its explication, action and end, the world and God. And since the
philosophy of history is transcendental in its internal structure,
it is not surprising that it showed itself to be such in all the
very varied forms that it assumed in the romantic period, even among
philosophers as avid of immanence as Hegel, a great destroyer of
Platonism, who yet remained to a considerable extent engaged in it,
so tenacious is that enemy which every thinker carries in himself and
which he should tear from his heart, yet cannot resist.

But without entering into a particular account of the assumptions
made by the romantics and idealists in the construction of their
'philosophies of history,' it will be sufficient to observe the
consequences, in order to point out the transcendental tendency
of their constructions. These were such as to compromise romantic
histories in the method and to damage them in the execution, though
they were at first so vigorously conceived as a unity of philosophy
and philology. One of the consequences was precisely the falling again
into contempt of erudition among those very people who adopted and
promoted it, and on other occasions a recommendation of it in words and
a contempt of it in deeds. This contradictory attitude was troubled
with an evil conscience, so much so that its recommendations sound but
little sincere, the contempt timid, when it shows itself, though it
is more often concealed. Nevertheless one discovers fleeting words of
revelation among these tortuosities and pretences, such as that of an
_a priori history_ (Fichte, Schelling, Krause, and, to a certain extent
at least, Hegel), which should be true history, deduced from the pure
concepts, or rendered divine in some vision of the seer of Patmos, a
history which should be more or less different from the confusion
of human events and facts, as philosophical history, leaving outside
it as refuse a merely _narrative_ history, which should serve as raw
material or as text for the sermons and precepts of the moralists and
politicians. And we see rising from the bosom of a philosophy, which
had tried to make history of itself, by making philosophy also history
(proof that the design had not been really translated into act), the
distinction between philosophy and history, between the historical and
the philosophical way of thinking, and the mutual antipathy and mutual
unfriendliness of the two orders of researchers. The 'professional'
historians were obliged to defend themselves against their progenitors
(the philosophers), and they ended by losing all pity for them, by
denying that they were philosophers and treating them as intruders and
charlatans.

Unpleasantness and ill-will were all the more inevitable in that the
'philosophers of history'--that is to say, the historians obsessed
with transcendency--did not always remain content (nor could they do
so, speaking strictly) with the distinction between philosophical and
narrative history, and, as was natural, attempted to harmonize the
two histories, to make the facts harmonize with the schemes which
they had imagined or deduced. With this purpose in view, they found
themselves led to use violence toward facts, in favour of their system,
and this resulted in certain most important parts being cut out, in a
Procrustean manner, and in others that were accepted being perverted
to suit a meaning that was not genuine but imposed upon them. Even
the chronological divisions, which formed a merely practical aid to
narratives, were tortured (as was the custom in the Middle Ages) that
they might be elevated to the rank of ideal divisions. And not only
was the light of truth extinguished in the pursuit of these caprices,
not only were individual sympathies and antipathies introduced (take
as an instance typical of all of them the idealization of Hellas and
of this or that one of the Hellenic races), but there appeared a
thing yet more personally offensive to the victims--that is to say,
there penetrated into history, under the guise of lofty philosophy,
the personal loves and hates of the historian, in so far as he was a
party man, a churchman, or belonged to this or that people, state,
or race. This ended in the invention of Germanism, the crown and
perfection of the human race, a Germanism which, claiming to be the
purest expression of Arianism, would have restored the idea of the
elect people, and have one day undertaken the journey to the East.
Thus were in turn celebrated semi-absolute monarchy as the absolute
form of states, speculative Lutheranism as the absolute form of
religion, and other suchlike vainglorious vaunts, with which the pride
of Germany oppressed the European peoples and indeed the whole world,
and thus exacted payment in a certain way for the new philosophy with
which Germany had endowed the world. But it must not be imagined that
the pride of Germany was not combated with its own arms, for if the
English speculated but little and the French were too firm in their
belief in the _Gesta Dei per Francos_ (become the gestes of reason
and civilization), yet the peoples who found themselves in less happy
conditions, and felt more keenly the censure of inferiority or of
senility thus inflicted upon them, reacted: Gioberti wrote a _Primato
d'Italia,_ and Ciezkowski a _Paternostro,_ which foretold the future
primacy of the Slavonic people and more especially of the Poles.

Yet another consequence of the 'philosophies of history' was the
reflourishing of 'universal histories,' in the fallacious signification
of complete histories of humanity, indeed of the cosmos, which the
Middle Ages had narrated in the chronicles ab origine mundi and _de
duabus civitatibus and de quattuor imperiis_, and the Renaissance and
enlightenment had reduced to mere vulgar compilations, finding the
centre for its own interest elsewhere. The _imagines mundi_ returned
with the philosophies of history, and such they were themselves,
transcendental universal histories, with the 'philosophy of nature'
belonging to them. The succession of the nations there took the place
of the series of empires: to each nation, as formerly to each empire,
was assigned a special function, which once fulfilled, it disappeared
or fell to pieces, having passed on the lamp of life, which must not
pass through the hands of any nation more than once. The German nation
was to play there the part of the Roman Empire, which should never
die, but exist perpetually, or until the consummation of the ages and
the Kingdom of God. To develop the various forms of the philosophy of
history would aid in making clear the internal contradictions of the
doctrine and in ascribing the reasons for the introduction of certain
corrections for the purpose of doing away with the contradictions
in question, but which in so doing introduced others. And in making
an examination of this kind a special place should be reserved for
Vico, who offers a 'philosophy of history' of a very complex sort,
which on the one side does not negate, but passes by in silence the
Christian and medieval conception (as it does not deny St Augustine's
conception of the two cities or of the elect and Gentile people, but
only seriously examines the history of the latter), while on the other
side it resumes the ancient Oriental motive of the circles (courses
and recourses), but understands the course as growth and development,
and the recourse as a dialectical return, which on the other hand
does not seem to give rise to progress, although it does not seem to
exclude it, and also does not exclude the autonomy of the free will or
the exception of contingency. In this conception the Middle Ages and
antiquity ferment, producing romantic and modern thought.[1] But in the
romantic period the idea of the circle (which yet contained a great
mental claim that demanded satisfaction) gave place to the idea of a
linear course, taken from Christianity and from progress to an end,
which concludes with a certain state as limit or with entrance into a
paradise of indefinite progress, of incessant joy without sorrow. In
a conception of this kind there is at one time a mixture of theology
and of illuminism, as in Herder, at another an attempt at a history
according to the ages of life and the forms of the spirit, as with
Fichte and his school; then again the idea realizes its logical ideal
in time, as in Hegel, or the shadow of a God reappears, as in the
deism of Laurent and of several others, or the God is that of the old
religion, but modernized, noble, judicious, liberal, as in moderate
Catholicism and Protestantism. And since the course has necessarily an
end in all these schemes, announced and described and therefore already
lived and passed by, attempts to prolong, to prorogue, or to vary that
end have not been wanting, such personages as the Abbots Gioacchini
arising and calling themselves the 'Slav apocalyptics' or by some other
name, and adding new eras to those described. But this did not change
anything in the general conception. And there was no change effected in
it by the philosophies of history of the second Schelling, for example,
which are usually called irrationalistic, or of the pessimists, because
it is clear that the decadence which they describe is a progress in the
opposite sense, a progress in evil and in suffering, having its end in
the acme of evil and pain, or leading indeed to a redemption and then
becoming a progress toward the good. But if the idea of circles, which
repeat themselves identically, oppresses historical consciousness,
which is the consciousness of perennial individuality and diversity,
this idea of progress to an end oppresses it in another way, because
it declares that all the creations of history are imperfect, save
the last, in which history comes to a standstill and which therefore
alone has absolute value, and which thus takes away from the value of
reality in favour of an abstraction, from existence in favour of the
inexistent. And both of these--that is to say, all the philosophies of
history, in whatever way determined--lay in ambush to overwhelm the
conceptions of development and the increase in historiographical value
obtained through it by romanticism; and when this injury did not occur
(as in several notable historians, who narrated history admirably,
although they professed to obey the rules of the abstract philosophy
of history, which they saluted from near or far, but took care not to
introduce into their narratives), it was a proof that the contradiction
had not been perceived, or at least perceived as we now perceive it,
in its profound dissonance. It was a sign that romanticism too had
problems upon which it laboured long and probed deeply, and others upon
which it did not work at all or only worked a little and kept waiting,
satisfying them more or less. History too, like the individual who
works, does 'one thing at a time,' neglecting or allowing to run on
with the help of slight provisional improvements the problems to which
it cannot for the time being attend, but ready to direct full attention
to them when its hands are free.


[1] The exposition and criticism of Vico's thought are copiously dealt
with in the second volume of my _Saggi filosofici i La filosofia di
Giambattista Vico_ (Bari, 1911).




VII


THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF POSITIVISM


The philosophies of history offended the historical consciousness
in three points, as to which it has every right to be jealous: the
integrity of historical events, the unity of the narration with the
document, and the immanence of development. And the opposition to the
'philosophy of history,' and to the historiography of romanticism in
general, broke out precisely at these three points, and was often
violent. This opposition had at bottom a common motive, as has been
shown clearly by the frequent sympathy and fraternizing among those
who represent it, though dissensions as to details are common among
them. It is, however, best to consider it in its triplicity for reasons
of clearness, and to describe it as that of the _historians,_ the
_philologists,_ and the _philosophers._

To the historians, by whom we mean those who had a special disposition
for the investigation of particular facts rather than theories, and a
greater acquaintance with and practice of historical than speculative
literature, is due the saying that history _should be history and
not philosophy._ Not that they ventured to deny philosophy, for on
the contrary they protested their reverence for it and even for
religion and theology, and condescended to make an occasional rapid
and cautious excursion into those waters; but they generally desired
to steer their way through the placid gulfs of historical truth,
avoiding the tempestuous oceans of the other discipline: philosophy was
relegated to the horizon of their works. Nor did they even contest,
at least in principle, the right of existence of those grandiose
constructions of 'universal history,' but they recommended and
preferred national or otherwise monographical histories, which can be
sufficiently studied in their particulars, substituting for universal
histories collections of histories of states and of peoples. And since
romanticism had introduced into those universal histories and into
the national histories themselves its various practical tendencies
(which the philosophy of history had then turned into dogmas), the
historians placed abstention from national and party tendencies upon
their programme, although they reserved the right of making felt their
patriotic and political aspirations, but, as they said, without for
that reason altering the narrative of the facts, which were supposed
to move along independently of their opinions, or chime in with them
spontaneously in the course of their natural development. And since
passion and the philosophic judgment had been confused and mutually
contaminated in romanticism, the abstention was extended also to
the judgment as to the quality of the facts narrated; the _reality_
and not the value of the fact being held to be the province of the
historian, appeal being made to what theorists and philosophers had
thought about it, where a more profound consideration of the problem
was demanded. History should not be either German or French, Catholic
or Protestant, but it should also not pretend to apply a more ample
conception to the solution of these or similar antitheses, as the
philosophers of history had tried to do, but rather should neutralize
them all in a wise scepticism or agnosticism, and attenuate them in a
form of exposition conducted in the tone of a presidential summing-up,
where careful attention is paid to the opinions of opposed parties and
courtesy is observed toward all. There was diplomacy in this, and it
is not astonishing that many diplomatists or disciples of diplomacy
should collaborate in this form of history, and that the greatest of
all the historians of this school, Leopold Ranke, in whom are to be
found all the traits that we have described, should have had a special
predilection for diplomatic sources. He always, indeed, combated
philosophy, especially the Hegelian philosophy, and greatly contributed
to discredit it with the historians, but he did this decorously,
carefully avoiding the use of any word that might sound too rough or
too strong, professing the firm conviction that the hand of God shows
itself in history, a hand that we cannot grasp with ours, but which
touches our face and informs us of its action. He completed his long
and very fruitful labours in the form of monographs, avoiding universal
constructions. When, at the end of his life, he set to work to compose
a Weltgeschichte, he carefully separated it from the universe,
declaring that it would have been "lost in phantasms and philosophemes"
had he abandoned the safe ground of national histories and sought for
any other sort of universality than that of nations, which "acting upon
one another, appear one after the other and constitute a living whole."
In his first book he protested with fine irony that he was not able
to accept the grave charge of judging the past or of instructing the
present as to the future, which had been assigned to history, but he
felt himself capable only of showing "how things really had happened"
(wie es eigentlich gewesen) this was his object in all his work, and he
held fast to it, thus culling laurels unobtainable by others, attaining
even to the writing of the history of the popes of the period of the
Counter-Reformation, although he was a Lutheran and remained so all his
life. This history was received with favour in all Catholic countries.
His greatest achievement was to write of French history in a manner
that did not displease the French. A writer of the greatest elegance,
he was able to steer between the rocks, without even letting appear his
own religious or philosophical convictions, and without ever finding
himself under the obligation of forming a definite resolution, and
in any case never pressing too hard upon the conceptions themselves
to which he had recourse, such as 'historical ideas,' the perpetual
struggle between Church and State, and the conception of the State.
Ranke was the ideal and the master to many historians within, and to
some without, his own country. But even without his direct influence,
the type of history that he represented germinated everywhere, a little
earlier or later according to position and to the calming down of the
great political passions and philosophical fervour in the different
countries. This took place, for instance, in France earlier than in
Italy, where the idealistic philosophy and the national movement made
their strength felt in historiography after 1848, and even up to 1860.
But the type of history which I should almost be disposed to baptize
with the name of 'diplomatic,' taking seriously the designation that
I had at first employed jocosely, still meets with success among
the moderately disposed, who are lovers of culture, but do not wish
to become infected with party passions or to rack their brains with
philosophical speculations: but, as may be imagined, it is not always
treated with the intelligence, the balance, and the finesse of a
Leopold Ranke.

The ambition of altogether rejecting the admission of thought into
history, which has been lacking to the diplomatic historians (because
they were without the necessary innocence for such an ambition), was,
on the other hand, possessed by the philologists, a most innocent
group. They were all the more disposed to abound in this sense, since
their opinion of themselves, which had formerly been most modest, had
been so notably increased, owing to the high degree of perfection
attained by research into chronicles and documents and by the recent
foundation (which indeed had not been a creation ex nihilo) of the
critical or historical method, which was employed in a fine and close
examination into the origin of sources and the reduction of these, and
in the internal criticism of texts. This pride of the philologists
prevailed, the method reaching its highest development in a country
like Germany, where haughty pedantry flourishes better than elsewhere,
and where, as a result of that most admirable thing, scientific
seriousness, 'scientificism' is much idolized. This word was also
ambitiously adopted for everything that concerns the surroundings and
the instruments of true and proper science, such as is the case with
the collection and criticism of narratives and documents. The old
school of learned men, French and Italian, who did not effect less
progress in 'method' than was attained during the nineteenth century in
Germany, did not dream that they were thus producing 'science,' much
less did they dream of vying with philosophy and theology, or that
they could drive them from their positions and take their places with
the documentary method. But in Germany every mean little copier of a
text, or collector of variants, or examiner of the relations of texts
and conjecturer as to the genuine text, raised himself to the level of
a scientific man and critic, and not only dared to look upon himself
as the equal of such men as Schelling, Hegel, Herder, or Schlegel,
but did so with disdain and contempt, calling them 'anti-methodical.'
This pseudo-scientific haughtiness diffused itself from Germany over
the other European countries, and has now reached America, though in
other countries than Germany it met more frequently with irreverent
spirits, who laughed at it. Then for the first time there manifested
itself that mode of historiography which I have termed 'philological'
or 'erudite' history. That is to say, the more or less judicious
compilations of sources which used to be called _Antiquitates, Annales,
Penus, Thesauri,_ presented themselves disguised as histories, which
alone were dignified and scientific. The faith of these historians
was reposed in a narrative of which every word could be supported by
a text, and there was nothing else whatever in their work, save what
was contained in the texts, torn from their contexts and repeated
without being thought by the philologist narrator. Their object
was that their histories should reach the rank of comprehensive
compilations, starting from those relating to particular times,
regions, and events, and finally attaining to the arrangement of the
whole of historical knowledge in great encyclopædias, out of which
articles are to be supplied, systematic or definitional, put together
by groups of specialists, directed by a specialist, for classical,
romantic, Germanic, Indo-European, and Semitic philology. With a view
to alleviating the aridity of their labours, the philologists sometimes
allowed themselves a little ornament in the shape of emotional
affections and ideal view-points. With this purpose, they had recourse
to memories of their student days, to the philosophical catchwords
which had been the fashion at the time, and to the ordinary sentiments
of the day toward politics, art, and morality. But they did all this
with great moderation, that they might not lose their reputation for
scientific gravity, and that they might not fail in respect toward
scientific philological history, which disdains the vain ornaments in
which philosophers, dilettantes, and charlatans delight. They ended
by tolerating historians of the type above described, but as a lesser
evil, and as a general rule inclined to pardon the sins arising out
of their commerce with 'ideas' in favour of the 'new documents' which
they had discovered or employed, and which they could always dig out of
their books as a useful residue, while purifying them from 'subjective'
admixtures--that is to say, from the elaboration of them which had
been attempted. Philosophy was known to them only as 'philosophy of
history,' but even thus rather by reason of its terrible ill-fame than
from direct acquaintance. They remembered and were ever ready to repeat
five or six anecdotes concerning errors in names and dates into which
celebrated philosophers had actually fallen, easily forgetful of the
innumerable errors into which they fell themselves (being more liable
as more exposed to danger); they almost persuaded themselves that
philosophy had been invented to alter the names and confuse the dates
which, had been confided to their amorous care, that it was the abyss
opened by the fiend to lead to the perdition of serious 'documentary
history.'

The third band of those opposed to the philosophy of history was
composed of philosophers or of historian--philosophers, but of those
who rejected the name and selected another less open to suspicion,
or tempered it with some adjective, or accepted it indeed, but
with opportune explanations: they styled themselves positivists,
naturalists, sociologists, empiricists, criticists, or something of
that sort. Their purpose was to do something different from what the
philosophers of history had done, and since these had worked with the
conception of the _end,_ they all of them swore that they would work
with the conception of the _cause;_ they would search out the cause
of every fact, thus generalizing more and more widely the causes or
the cause of the entire course of history: those others had attempted
a _dynamic_ of history; they would work at a _mechanic_ of history, a
social physics. A special science arose, opposed to the philosophy of
history, in which that naturalistic and positivistic tendency became
exalted in its own eyes: sociology. Sociology classified facts of human
origin and determined the laws of mutual dependence which regulated
them, furnishing the narratives of historians with the principles of
explanation, by means of these laws. Historians, on the other hand,
diligently collected facts and offered them to sociology, that it might
press the juice out of them--that is to say, that it might classify
and deduce the laws that governed them. History and sociology, then,
stood to one another in the same relation as physiology and zoology,
physics and mineralogy, or in another relation of the same sort; they
differed from the physical and natural sciences only by their greater
complexity. The introduction of mathematical calculation seemed to
be the condition of progress for history as for all the sciences,
physical and natural. A new 'science' came forward to support this
notion, in the shape of that humble servant of practical administration
and inspired creation of bureaucracy known as statistics. And since
the whole of science was being modelled upon the idea of a factory
of condensation, so were 'syntheses' invoked and outlined for
history--that is to say, historical frameworks, in which the laws and
facts chat dominate single histories should be resumed, as though in a
sort of table or atlas, which should show at a glance causes and the
facts which arose from them. Need we recall the names and supporters
of this school--Comte, Buckle, Taine, and so on, until we come to those
recent historians who follow them, such as Lamprecht and Breysig? Need
we recall the most consequent and the most paradoxical programmes or
the school, as, for instance, Buckle's introduction to his history of
civilization or Bourdeau's book on the _Histoire des historiens?_ These
and similar positivistic doctrines are present to the memory, either
because they are nearest to us chronologically, or because the echo
of the noise they made in the world has not yet ceased, and we see
everywhere traces of their influence. Everywhere we see it, and above
all in the prejudice which they have solidly established (and which we
must patiently corrode and dissolve), that history, true history, is to
be constructed by means of the _naturalistic_ method, and that _causal_
induction should be employed. Then there are the manifold naturalistic
conceptions with which they have imbued modern thought: race, heredity,
degeneration, imitation, influence, climate, historical factors, and so
forth. And here, too, as in the case of the philosophies of history,
since it suffices us to select only the essential in each fact, we
shall not dwell upon the various particular forms of it--that is to
say, upon the various modes in which historical causes were enunciated
and enumerated, and upon the various claims that one or other of them
was supreme: now the race, now the climate, now economy, now technique,
and so forth. Here, too, the study of the particular forms would be of
use to anyone who wished to develop in particular the dialectic and to
trace the internal dissolution of that school, to demonstrate in its
particular modes its intrinsic tendency to surpass itself, though it
failed to do so by that path.

We have already mentioned that the three classes of opponents of
the 'philosophies of history' and the three methods by which they
proposed to supplant it--diplomatic, philological, and positivistic
history--showed that they disagreed among themselves. Confirmation of
this may now be found in the contempt of the diplomatic historians
for mere erudition and in their diffidence for the constructions of
positivism, the erudite, for their part, being fearful of perversions
of names and dates and shaking their heads at diplomatic histories
and the careless style of the men of the world who composed them.
Finally, the positivists looked upon the latter as people who did not
go to the bottom of things, to their general or natural causes, and
reproved the erudite with their incapacity for rising to the level
of laws and to the establishment of facts in accordance with these
laws, sociological, physiological, or pathological. But there is
further confirmation of what has been noted in respect to the common
conception that animated them all and of their substantial affinity,
because when the erudite wished to cloak themselves in a philosophy
of some sort, they very readily strutted about draped in some shreds
of positivistic thought or phraseology. They also participated in the
reserve and in the agnosticism of the positivists and the diplomatic
historians toward speculative problems, and in like manner it was
impossible not to recognize the justice of their claim that evidence
should be reliable and documents authentic. The diplomatic historians
agreed with them in the formula that history should not be philosophy
and that research should dispense with finality and follow the line
of causality. In fact, all three sorts of opponents, at one with the
transcendency of the philosophy of history, negated the unity of
history with philosophy, but in various degrees and with various
particular meanings, with various preliminary studies and in various
ways. And although these schools were in agreement as to what they
negated, all three of them become for us exposed to a criticism which
unites them beneath a single negation. For not even do the ability and
the intelligence of a Ranke avail to give vigour to the moderatism
and to maintain firmly the eclecticism of diplomatic history, and
the transaction breaks down before the failure on the part of those
who attempted it, owing to its being contrary to their own powers
and intrinsically impossible. The idea of an agnostic history turns
out to be fallacious--that is to say, of a history that is not
philosophical but does not deny philosophy, that is not theological
but is not anti-theological, limiting itself to nations and to their
reciprocal influence upon one another, because Ranke himself was
obliged to recognize powers or ideals that are superior to nations and
that as such require to be speculatively justified in a philosophy or
in a theology. In this way he laid himself open to the accusations
of the positivists, who discredited his ideas as 'mystical.' For the
same reason others were proceeding to reduce them little by little
from the position of ideals or movements of the spirit to natural and
physiological products, as was attempted by Lorenz, an ardent follower
of Ranke, who, with his doctrine of generation and of heredity, fell
into that physiologism and naturalism from which the master had
preserved himself. And when this passage from spirituality to nature
was accomplished, the dividing line between history and pre-history,
between history of civilization and history of nature, was also not
respected. On the other hand, a return was made to the 'philosophies
of history,' when ideas were interpreted as transcendental and as
answering to the designs of the divine will, which governs the world
according to a law and conducts it according to a plan of travel. The
boasted impartiality and objectivity, which was based upon a literary
device of half-words, of innuendoes, of prudent silences, was also
equally illusory, and the Jesuit who objected to Ranke and his history
of the popes will always prevail from the point of view of rigorous
criticism--either the Papacy is always and everywhere what it affirms
itself to be, an institution of the Son of God made man, or it is a
lie. Respect and caution are out of place here. _Tertium non datur._
Indeed, it was not possible to escape from taking sides by adopting
that point of view; at the most a third party was thus formed,
consisting of the tolerant, the tepid, and the indifferent. The slight
coherence of Ranke's principles can be observed in that part of his
_Universal History_ where, when speaking of Tacitus he touches upon
his own experience as a teacher of history, he declares that "it is
impossible to speak of a tranquil and uniform progressive development
of historiography either among the ancients or the moderns, because the
object itself is formed in the course of time and is always different,
and conceptions depend upon the circumstances among which the author
lives and writes." He thus comes to perform an act of resignation
before blind contingentism, and the present historical sketch shows
how unjust this is, for it has traced the organic and progressive
development of historical thought from the Greeks to modern times. And
the whole of the _Universal History_ is there to prove, on the other
hand, that his slight coherence of ideas, or web of ideas that he left
intentionally vague, made it difficult for him to give life to a vast
historical narrative, so lacking in connexion, so heavy, and sometimes
even issuing in extraneous reflections, such, for example, as those
in the first pages of the first volume, where there is a comparison
of Saul and Samuel with the emperors at strife with the popes, and of
the policy of Rehoboam and Jeroboam with the political strife between
the centralizing states and the centrifugal regions of modern times.
We find in general in Ranke an inevitable tendency to subside into the
pragmatic method. And what has been said of Ranke is to be repeated
of his disciples and of those who cultivated the same conciliatory
type of history. As for philological history, the description that
has been given of the programme makes clear its nullity, for it leads
by a most direct route to a double absurdity. When the most rigorous
methods of examining witnesses is really applied, there is no witness
that cannot be suspected and questioned, and philological history
leads to the negation of the truth of that history which it wishes to
construct. And if value be attributed to certain evidence arbitrarily
and for external reasons, there is no extravagance that may not be
accepted, because there is no extravagance that may not have honest,
candid, and intelligent men on its side. It is not possible to reject
even miracles by the philological method, since these repose upon the
same attestations which make certain a war or a peace treaty, as Lorenz
has shown by examining the miracles of St Bernard in the light of the
severest philological criticism. In order to save himself from the
admission of the inconceivable and of the nullification of history,
which follows the nullification of witnesses, there remains nothing
but appeal to thought, which reconstitutes history from the inside,
and is evidence to itself, and denies what is unthinkable for the very
reason that it is not to be thought. This appeal is the declaration of
bankruptcy for philological history. We may certainly say that this
form of history more or less sustains itself as history, to the extent
that it has recourse to all the aids furnished by history proper, and
contradicts itself; or it contradicts itself and yet does not sustain
itself, or only for a little while and in appearance, by again adopting
the methods of pragmaticism, of transcendency, and of positivism. And
the last of these in its turn encounters the same experiences in a
different order, because its principle of history that explains facts
causally presupposes the facts, which as such are thought and therefore
are in a way already explained. Hence a vicious circle, evident in the
connexion between history and sociology, each one of which is to be
based upon and at the same time to afford a base for the other, much
in the same way as a column which should support a capital and at the
same time spring from it. But if, with a view to breaking the circle,
history be taken as the base and sociology as its fulfilment, then the
latter will no longer be the explanation of the former, which will find
its explanation elsewhere. And this will be, according to taste, either
an unknown principle or some form of thought that acts in the same way
as God, and in both cases a transcendental principle. Hence we have the
fact of positivism leading to philosophies of history, as exemplified
in the Apocalypses and the Gospels of Comte, of Buckle, and of others
of like sort: they are all most reverent theologians, but chaotic,
falling back into those fallacious conceptions which had been refuted
by romantic historiography.

Truly, when faced with such histories as these, superficial or
unintelligent or rude and fantastic, romanticism, conscious of the
altitude to which it had elevated the study of the development of human
affairs, might have exclaimed (and indeed it did exclaim by the mouth
of its epigoni) to its adversaries and successors, in imitation of the
tone of Bonaparte on the 18th of Brumaire: "What have you done with the
history which I left to you so brilliant? Were these the new methods,
by means of which you promised to solve the problems which I had not
been able to solve? I see nothing in them but _revers et misère!_" But
we who have never met with absolute regressions during the secular
development of historiography shall not allow ourselves to be carried
away upon the polemical waves now beating against the positivistic and
naturalistic school which is our present or recent adversary, to the
point of losing sight of what it possessed that was substantially its
own, and owing to which it really did represent progress. We shall also
refrain from drawing comparisons between romanticism and positivism,
by measuring the merits of both, and concluding with the assertion
of the superiority of the former; because it is well known that such
examinations of degrees of merit, the field of professors, are not
permissible in history, where what follows ideally after is virtually
superior to that from which it is derived, notwithstanding appearances
to the contrary. And in the first place, it would be erroneous,
strictly speaking, to believe that what had been won by romanticism had
been lost in positivism, because when the histories of this period are
looked upon from other points of view and with greater attention, we
see how they were all preserved. Romanticism had abolished historical
dualism, for which there existed in reality positive and negative,
elect and outcast, facts. Positivism repeated that all facts are
facts and all have an equal right to enter history. Romanticism had
substituted the conception of development for the abysses and the
chasms that previous historiography had introduced into the course
of events, and positivism repeated that conception, calling it
_evolution._ Romanticism had established periods in development, either
in the form of a cycle of phases, like Vico, or as phases without
a circle and in linear order, like the German romantics, and had
exemplified the various phases as a series of the forms of the spirit
or of psychological forms, and positivism renewed these conceptions
(although owing to the lack of culture usual with its adherents it
often believed that it had made discoveries never made before), as can
be proved by a long series of examples. These range from the _three
ages_ of mental development of Comte to the _eight phases_ of social
development or _four political periods_ which are respectively the
'novelties' of the contemporaries Lamprecht and Breysig. Romanticism,
judging that the explanation of events by means of the caprices, the
calculations, and the designs of individuals taken atomistically was
frivolous, took as the subject of history the universals, the Idea,
ideas, the spirit, nations and liberty and positivism; it also rejected
individualistic atomicism, talking of _masses, races, societies,
technique, economy, science, social tendencies_; of everything, in
fact, with the exception that the caprice of Tizius and Caius was
now no longer admitted. Romanticism had now not only reinforced the
histories of ideal values, but had conceived them as in organic
connexion; positivism in its turn insisted upon the _interdependence
of social factors_ and upon the unity of the real, and attempted to
fill up the interstices of the various special histories by means of
the history of _civilization_ and of _culture,_ and so-called _social_
history, containing in itself politics, literature, philosophy,
religion, and every other class of facts. Romanticism had overthrown
heteronomous, instructive, moralizing, serviceable history, and
positivism in its turn boasted that its history was a _science,_ an
end in itself, like every other science, although like every science
it afforded the basis for practice, and was therefore capable of
application. Romanticism had enhanced the esteem for erudition, and
had given an impetus to intercourse between it and history. But whence
did the erudition and philology of the positivistic period derive
that pride which made them believe that they were themselves history,
save from the consciousness that they had inherited from romanticism,
which they had preserved and exaggerated? Whence did they inherit the
substance of their method save (as Fueter well notes) from the romantic
search for the primitive, the genuine, the ingenuous, which manifested
itself in Wolf, who inaugurated the method? It is well to remember that
Wolf was a pre-romantic, an admirer of Ossian and of popular poetry.
And, finally, what is the meaning of the efforts of positivism to
seek out the _causes_ of history, the series of historical facts, the
_unity_ of the factors and their dependence upon a _supreme cause,_
save the speculations of the romantics themselves upon the manner,
the end, and the value of development? Whoever pays attention to all
these and other resemblances which we could enumerate must conclude
that positivism is to romanticism as was the enlightenment to the
Renaissance--that is to say, it is not so much its antithesis as it is
the logical prosecution and the exaggeration of its presuppositions.
Even its final conversion into theology corresponds to that of
romanticism. This is for the rest an obvious matter, for transcendency
is always transcendency, whether it be thought of as that of a God
or of reason, of nature or of matter. But thinking of it as Matter
or Nature, this naturalistic and materialistic travesty, which at
first seems odious or ridiculous, of the problems and conceptions of
romanticism, of the idea into cause, of development into evolution,
of the spirit into mass and the like, to which one would at first be
inclined to attribute the inferiority of positivistic historiography,
is, on the contrary, for the close observer the progress made by it
upon romanticism. That travesty contains the energetic negation of
history as moved by extramundane forces, by external finalities,
by transcendental laws, just both in its motive and in its general
tendency, and the correlative affirmation that its law must be sought
in reality, which is one and is called 'nature.' The positivism,
which on no account wished to hear anything of 'metaphysic,' had in
mind the dogmatic and transcendental metaphysic, which had filtered
into the thought of Kant and of his successors; and the target of its
contempt was a good one, although it ended by confusing metaphysic
with philosophy in general, or dogmatic with critical metaphysic,
the metaphysic of being with that of the mind, and was not itself
altogether free from that which it undertook to combat. But this does
not prevent its repugnance to 'metaphysic' and, restricting ourselves
to what is our more immediate interest, to the 'philosophy of history'
from having produced durable results. Thanks to positivism historical
works became less naïve and richer in facts, especially in that class
of facts which romanticism had neglected, such as the dispositions
that are called natural, the processes that are called degenerative or
pathological, the spiritual complications that are called psychological
illusions, the interests that are called material, the production and
the distribution of wealth, or economic activity, the facts of force
and violence, or of political and revolutionary power. Positivism,
intent upon the negation of transcendency and upon the observation of
what appertained to it, felt itself to be, and was in that respect, in
the right. And each one of us who pays due attention to that order of
things and renews that negation is gathering the fruit of positivism,
and in that respect is a positivist. Its very contradictions had the
merit of making more evident the contradictions latent in romantic
historiography. This merit must be admitted to the most extravagant
doctrines of the positivists, such as that of Taine, that knowledge
is a true hallucination and that human wisdom is an accident (_une
rencontre_), which presumed irrationality to be the normal condition,
much as Lombroso believed that genius is madness. Another instance
of this is the attempt to discover in what way heterogeneity and
historical diversity come into existence, if homogeneity is posited;
and again the methodical canon that the explanation of history is to
be found in causality, but is to stop at genius and virtue, which are
without it, because they refuse to accept of causal explanation, or
the frightful Unknowable, which was placed at the head of histories
of the real, after so great a fuss being made about that Titan
science which was ready to scale the skies. But since romanticism
had left spirit and nature without fusion, the one facing the other,
it was just that if in the first place spirit swallowed up nature
without being able to digest it (because, as had been laid down, it
was indigestible), now nature was engaged in doing the same thing to
spirit, and with the same result. So just and logical was this that
not a few of the old idealists went over to the crassest materialism
and positivism, and that confession of not being able to see their way
in the confusion was at once instructive and suggestive, as was also
the perplexity decorated with the name of 'agnosticism.' And as the
precise affirmation of the positivity of history represented an advance
in thought, so the antithesis of materialism, pushed to an extreme, was
an advance in the preparation of the new problem and in the new way of
solving the relation between spirit and nature. _Oportet ut scandala,
eveniant,_ and this means that even scandal, the scandal of the absurd,
and of offensive false criticisms of human conscience, is an advance.




VIII


THE NEW HISTORIOGRAPHY CONCLUSION


The romantic current not only maintained itself in its excesses during
the dominion of positivism, and, as we have shown, insinuated itself
even into its naturalistic antithesis, but it also persisted in its
genuine form. And although we have not spoken of pedantic imitators
and conservatives--whose significance is slight in the history of
thought, that is to say, confined to the narrow sphere in which they
were compelled to think for themselves--we have nevertheless recorded
the preservation of romanticism in the eclecticism of Ranke, who
adhered to the theories of Humboldt (another 'diplomatist'). Idealistic
and romantic motives continued to illuminate the intellect and soul
among the philosophers, from Humboldt to Lotze and from Hartmann to
Wundt and those who corresponded to them in other countries. The like
occurred in historiography properly so called, and could not but
happen, because, if the formulas of agnosticism and of positivism had
been followed to the letter, all light of thought would have been
extinguished in blind mechanicism--that is to say, in nothing--and no
historical representation would have been possible. Thus political,
social, philosophical, literary, and artistic history continued to
make acquisitions, if not equally important with those of the romantic
period (the surroundings were far more favourable to the natural
sciences and to mathematics than to history), yet noteworthy. This is
set forth in a copious volume upon historiography (I refer to the work
of Fueter already several times mentioned in this connexion). There
due honour will be found accorded to the great work accomplished by
Ranke, which the rapidity of my course of exposition has induced me to
illustrate rather in its negative aspects, causing me, for instance,
to allude solely to the contradictions in the _History of the Popes,_
which is notwithstanding a masterpiece. The cogent quality of the
romantic spirit at its best is revealed in the typical instance of
Taine, who is so ingenuously naturalistic in his propositions and in
the directive principles of his work, yet so unrestrainedly romantic
in particular instances, as, for example, in his characterization of
the French poets or of the Dutch and Italian painters. All this led to
his ending in the exaggerated anti-Jacobin romanticism of his _Origines
de la France contemporaine,_ in the same way that Zola and the other
verists, those verbal enemies of romanticism, were lyrical in all
their fiction, and the leader of the school was induced to conclude
his works with the abstract lyricism of the _Quatre évangiles._ What
has been observed of Taine is to be applied to Buckle and to the
other naturalists and positivists, obliged to be historical against
their will, and to the positivists who became followers of historical
materialism, and found the dialectic established in their house without
being able to explain what it was or whence it came. Not all theorists
of historiography showed themselves to be so resolutely and madly
naturalistic as Bourdeau and one or two others; indeed these were few
in number and of inferior reputation. Eclecticism prevailed among
the majority of them, a combination of necessity and of liberty, of
masses and individuals, of cause and end, of nature and spirit: even
the philosophy of history was admitted, if in no other form, then as a
_desideratum_ or a problem to be discussed at a convenient time (even
though that were the Greek Kalends). Eclecticism, too, presented the
greatest variety, from the low level of a trivial arranging of concepts
in an artificial manner to the lofty heights of interior labour, from
which it seemed at every moment that a new gospel, no longer eclectic,
must issue.

This last form of eclecticism and the open attempts to renew romantic
idealism more or less completely, as well as romantic methods of
historiography, have become more frequent since modern consciousness
has withdrawn itself from positivism and has declared its bankruptcy.
But all this is of importance rather as a symptom of a real advance in
thought. And the new modern philosophies of intuition and philosophy
of values must be looked upon rather as symptoms than as representing
progress in thought (I mean in general, and not in the particular
thoughts and theories which often form a real contribution). The former
of these, however, while it correctly criticizes science as an economic
construction useless for true knowledge, then proceeds to shut itself
up in immediate consciousness, a sort of mysticism, where historical
dialectic finds itself submerged and suffocated; and the latter,
placing the conception of value as guardian of the spirit in opposition
to the conceptions of science like "a philosophical _cave canem_" (as
our imaginative Tari would have said), leaves open a dualism, which
stands in the way of the unity of history and of thought as history.
When we look around us, therefore, we do not discover that _new
philosophy_ which shall lay the foundations and at the same time afford
justification for the new historiography by solving the antithesis
between imaginative romanticism and materialistic positivism. And it
is clear that we are not even able to discuss such a philosophy as a
_demand,_ because the demand for a particular philosophy is itself the
thinking of that particular philosophy, and therefore is not a demand
but an actuality. Hence the dilemma either of saying nothing about it,
and in this case of not speaking even of positivism as a period that
has been closed and superseded, or of speaking of the new philosophy as
of something that lives and exists, precisely because it does live and
exist. And since to renounce talking of it has been rendered impossible
by the very criticism chat we have devoted to it, nothing remains save
to recognize that philosophy as something that exists, not as something
to be invoked. Only we must not _look around us_ in order to see where
it is, but return to _ourselves_ and have recourse to the thought
that has animated this historical sketch of historiography and to all
the historical explanations that have preceded it. In the philosophy
that we have delineated, reality is affirmed to be spirit, not such
that it is above the world or wanders about the world, but such as
coincides with the world; and nature has been shown as a moment and a
product of this spirit itself, and therefore the dualism (at least that
which has troubled thought from Thales to Spencer) is superseded, and
transcendency of all sorts, whether materialistic or theological in its
origin, has also been superseded with it. Spirit, which is the world,
is the spirit which develops, and is therefore both one and diverse, an
eternal solution and an eternal problem, and its self-consciousness is
philosophy, which is its history, or history, which is its philosophy,
each substantially identical with the other; and consciousness is
identical with self-consciousness--that is to say, distinct and one
with it at the same time, as life and thought. This philosophy, which
is in us and is ours, enables us to recognize it--that is to say, to
recognize ourselves outside of us--in the thought of other men which is
also our thought, and to discover it more or less clearly and perfectly
in the other forms of contemporary philosophy, and more or less clearly
in contemporary historiography. We have frequent opportunities of
effecting this recognition, which is productive of much spiritual
comfort. Quite lately, for instance, while I was writing these pages,
the historical work of a historian, a pure historian, came into my
hands (I select this instance among many) where I read words at the
very beginning which seemed to be my very own: "My book is based upon
the conviction that German historical inquiry must elevate itself to
freer movement and contact with the great forces of political life and
culture, without renouncing the precious tradition of its method, and
that it must plunge into philosophy and politics, without experiencing
injury in its end or essence, for thus alone can it develop its
intimate essence and be both universal and national."[1] This is the
philosophy of our time, which is the initiator of a new philosophical
and historiographical period. But it is not possible to write the
history of this philosophy and of this historiography, which is subject
and not _object_, not for the reason generally adopted, which we
have found to be false, since it separates the fact of consciousness
from the fact, but for the other reason that the history which we
are constructing is a history of 'epochs' or of 'great periods,' and
the new period is new, just because it is not a period--that is
to say, something closed. Not only are we not able to describe its
chronological and geographical outline, because we are ignorant as to
what measure of time it will fill (will it develop rapidly in thirty
or forty years, or will it encounter obstacles, yet nevertheless
continue its course for centuries?), what extent of countries it
will include (will it remain for long Italian or German, confined to
certain Italian or German circles, or will it diffuse itself rapidly
in all countries, both in general culture and in public instruction?),
but we are unable to limit _logically_ what may be its value outside
these considerations. The reason for this is that in order to be able
to describe its limitations, it must necessarily have developed its
antitheses--that is to say, the new problems that will infallibly arise
from its solutions, and this has not happened: we are ourselves on
the waves and we have not furled our sails in port preparatory to a
new voyage. _Bis hierher ist das Bewusstsein gekommen_ (Knowledge has
reached this point in its development), said Hegel, at the end of his
lectures upon the philosophy of history; and yet he had not the right
to say so, because his development, which went from the unconsciousness
of liberty to the full consciousness of it in the German world and in
the system of absolute idealism, did not admit of prosecution. But
we are well able to say so, for we have overcome the abstractness of
Hegelianism.


[1] Friedrich Meinecke, _Weltbürgerthum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur
Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaates,_ second edition, preface, p.
vii. (München u. Berlin, Oldenburg, 1911.)