Part 19

The conviction that has been gained as to the necessity of the logical element, of concepts, criteria, or values, for the formation of narrative, has induced some to demand, not only that the historian should continually have clearly and firmly in mind the concepts that he employs and his intention in employing them, but that a _theory of historical factors_ or, as others call it, a _table of values,_ should be constructed, which should serve as foundation for historical narrative in general. The demand is exactly similar to that of the man who, observing that electricians or metal-founders employ physical forces, demands the construction of a physical theory to serve as the basis of industry; as if Physics did not exist and supply the basis for industry; or as if the sciences changed their nature, according to the men who employ them. The theory of historical factors, or the table of values, exists, and is called _Philosophy,_ whose precise business it is to define _universals,_ which are _factors_ and not facts, and to give the table of _values,_ which are _categories._ At the most this demand might be taken to suggest the recommendation of a popular philosophy, for the use of professional historians; but this too exists and is natural _good sense. A_ historian who entertains doubts as to the deliverances of good sense begins to philosophize (in the restricted and professional sense of the word), and once he has done this, what is called popular philosophy no longer suffices him, or serves only to make his mental condition worse, with its insufficient nourishment. Books on the teaching of history which abound in our literature of to-day are proof of this. Disquisitions as to the _predominance_ or the _fundamental_ character of this or that historical factor belong to this popular and more or less dilettante literature. In strict philosophy, such problems do not arise, or are promptly dissolved, because it is known that, since every fact of reality depends upon another fact, so also every factor, or every constitutive element of the spirit and of reality, is such only in union with other factors and elements. None of them predominates, because measures of greater or less are not used in philosophy, and none is fundamental, because all are fundamental.

[Sidenote: _Impossibility of dividing history according to its intuitive and reflective elements._]

The representative and conceptual elements in historical judgment are not separable or even, strictly, distinguishable unless it is intended to dissolve the historical narrative in order to return to pure intuition. This too is a corollary of what has been said on the individual judgment. For this reason, every division of history, based upon the presence or absence of one or other of these elements, must be held to be without truth. Of this kind is the once popular division into _picturesque_ and _reflective_ or _thinking_ history. But this division designates not two kinds of history, but rather, on the one hand, the return to indiscriminate intuition, and on the other, true history, which is intuition thought or reflected. The same false division is sometimes expressed in the terms _chronicle_ and _history,_ or _narrative_ and _philosophic_ history.

[Sidenote: _Empirical nature of the division of the historical process into four stages._]

Outside the individual judgment, there is neither subject nor predicate. Outside the narrative, which synthesizes representation and concept, and by representing gives existence and judgment, there is no history. Technical manuals usually divide the process of historical composition into four stages. The first is _heuristic,_ consisting of the collection of historical material; the second _criticism_ or _separation_ of it; the third is _interpretation_ or _comprehension,_ the fourth _exposition_ or _narrative._ These distinctions portray the professional historian's method of work. _First,_ he examines archives and libraries, _then_ he verifies the authenticity of the documents found, _then_ he seeks to understand them, and _finally_ he puts his thoughts on paper and pays attention to the beauty of form of the exposition. These are doubtless useful didactic distinctions. But it must be observed that so long as we do not have a historical source before us (the first stage) the very condition of the birth of history is wanting. Hence the first stage does not belong to historical work, but to the practical stage of him who goes in search of a material object. The second stage is already a complete historical work in itself, since it consists in establishing, whether a given fact, called sincere evidence, has really taken place. The third coincides logically with the second, since it is the same thing to ascertain the value of a piece of evidence and to pronounce on the reality and quality of the facts to which it witnesses. The fourth coincides with the second and third, because it is impossible to think a narrative without speaking it, that is, without giving to it expressive or verbal form.

[Sidenote: _Divisions founded upon the historical object._]

If history be not divisible on the basis of the presence or absence of the reflective or representative element, it may well be divided by taking as basis, either the concept that determines the particular historical composition, or the representative material that enters into it.

[Sidenote: _Logical division according to the forms of the spirit._]

The first mode of distinction is rigorous, because founded upon the character of unity-in-distinction, proper to the pure concept. Thus, the human mind cannot think history as a whole, save by distinguishing it at the same time into the history of doing and the history of knowing, into the history of the practical activity and the history of æsthetic production, of philosophic thought, and so on. In like manner, it cannot think any one of these distinctions, save by placing it in relation with the others, or with the whole, and thinking it in complete history. Naturally, this intimate, logical unity and distinction has nothing to do with the _books_ which are called histories of the practical, philosophic, artistic activities, and the like. There the correspondence with the division of which we speak is only approximate, owing to the operation of what we called practical or economic motives. But every historical proposition, like every individual judgment, qualifies the real according to one aspect of the concept, and excludes another, or it qualifies it indeed according to all its aspects, but distinguishes them, and therefore prevents the one from intruding upon the other. The literary division of books into books of practical, philosophic, and artistic history, and so on, gets its importance from this fundamental distinction, according to which are also divided the different points of view of historians and the various interests of their readers.

[Sidenote: _Empirical division of representative material._]

The second mode is, of necessity, empirical, and cannot be carried out without the introduction of empirical concepts. For otherwise it would not be possible to keep the representations of reality separate, since they constitute a continuous and compact series. By means of empirical concepts, history is divided into the history of the State, of the Church, of society, of the family, of religion (as distinct from philosophy), or of philosophy (as distinct from religion). Or, as the history of philosophy, it is divided into the history of idealism, of materialism, of scepticism; or as the history of art, into the history of painting, of poetry, of the drama, of fiction. Or again, as the history of civilization, it is divided into oriental history--history of Greece, of Rome, of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, and so on. Even these last mentioned criteria (Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, etc.) are empirical concepts and not representations, because, as we know,[2] the representation is individual, and when it is made constant and general it is changed into a concept of the individual, the summary and symbol of several representations, in fact, the empirical concept. Each one of these divisions is valid in so far as it is useful; and equally valid, under a like condition, are all the divisions that have been conceived, and the infinite number that are conceivable.

[Sidenote: _Empirical concepts in history and the false theory as to the function that they have there._]

But the failure to understand that the true function of the introduction of empirical concepts is to divide the mass of historical facts and to regroup them conveniently for mnemonic purposes, has greatly interfered with the ideas of logicians as to the writing of history. Just as the individual judgment presupposes neither the empirical concept, nor the judgment of classification, nor the abstract concept, nor the judgment of enumeration, whereas all these forms presuppose just the individual judgment; so history does not presuppose classifications conducted from the practical point of view, or enumerations and statistics, whereas on the other hand all of these do presuppose history, and without it could not appear. We should not be deceived by finding them fused in historical works (which continually have recourse to such aids to memory), nor allow ourselves to forget that their function is _subservient,_ not _constitutive._ There can be no abstract idea of the Greek, unless we have first known the individual life of the men called Pericles and Alcibiades. Nor can there be any enumeration of the Three Hundred of Thermopylæ or of the Three Hundred of Cremera, except in so far as each was known in his individual features, and then classified as a citizen of Sparta or a Roman of the Fabian _gens._ To avail oneself of these simplifications is not to narrate history, which is already present to the spirit, but to fix it in the memory and to communicate it to others in an easier way. Those others, if they have not the capacity to recover the individual fact beneath those concepts of class and of number, will understand nothing of history, thus simplified and reduced to a skeleton for the purposes of communication.

[Sidenote: _Hence comes also the claim to reduce history to a natural science;_]

The positivist fiction that _history can be reduced to a science_ (natural science is of course meant) arises from the false interpretation of the subsidiary character of the pseudoconcepts in history and from making them a constitutive part of it. History, on this view, would be rendered a perfect example of what it has hitherto been only in imperfect outline, a classification and statistical table of reality. The many practical attempts at such a reduction have damaged contemporary historical writing not a little, by substituting colourless formulæ and empty abstractions which are applicable to several epochs at once or to all times, for the narration of individual reality. The same tendency appears in what is called _sociologism,_ and in its polemic against what it calls _psychological_ or _individual_ history, and in favour of _institutional_ or _social_ history. Against these materialistic reductions of history, the doctrines of _accident_ or of _little causes_ which upset the effects of _great_ causes, are efficacious and valuable, for these and suchlike absurdities have the merit of reducing that false reduction to absurdity.

[Sidenote: _and the thesis of the practical character of history._]

By reason of the same erroneous interpretation there has come from philosophers who are not positivists, the theory that history is rendered possible only by the intervention of _the practical_ spirit. On this view, the practical spirit, after establishing practical values, arranges beneath them the formless material and shapes it into historical narrative. But the practical spirit is impotent to produce anything in the field of knowledge; it can act only as the custodian and administrator of what has already been produced. For this reason, the theory here referred to, by appealing to the practical spirit, resolves itself into a complete negation of the value of history as knowledge. And this negation, though it was certainly not foreseen or desired by those who maintain the theory, yet is unavoidable.

[Sidenote: _Distinction between historical facts and facts that are not historical, and its empirical value._]

In this connection, there has also been maintained the importance of the distinction between historical events and events not worthy of history, between historical and non-historical, or between teleological and ateleological personages. Such a distinction, it has been affirmed, is afforded by the practical spirit. This is true, but for the reason already given, it amounts to removing all theoretical importance from the distinction, by emptying it of all cognitive content. In reality, for the practical economy of social work, for selecting subjects for books, or for being easily understood in our own speech, it is necessary to speak of a definite event or of a definite individual as a thing and person altogether common and unworthy of history. But it asks the brain of a pedant to imagine that the individual or the event has thereby been suppressed, we do not say from the field of reality (which would be too manifestly absurd), but from that of the _narrative of reality,_ or from history. What is understood forms part of what is said; and if we did not always imply a mental reference to the men we call commonplace, and to insignificant facts, which are more or less excluded from our words, great men and significant events would also lose all meaning. Such implications are so little eliminated or eliminable, that they break out and are even verbally expressed, according to the various interests that determine books on history at various times. Thus we have seen domestic and social life, neglected by the old historians, not only gradually assume importance, but throw wars and diplomatic negotiations into the shade. We have seen the so-called masses, neglected in favour of the individual genius, in their turn conquer, and almost eclipse, the heroes (which does not mean that these latter will not have their revenge). We have seen names, once hardly mentioned, become attractive and popular, and others, at one time celebrated, lose their colour and disappear from view. Even Italian histories of the most recent events afford instances of such fluctuations. For instance, in the period of the Risorgimento, the prevailing interest regarded as supremely important and historical, the formation of Italian nationality, the constitution of the middle class and of the commune, and popular rebellions against foreigners or against tyrants. Now it is the social problem and the socialist movement that dominate, and preference is given to histories of economic facts, of class struggles and of movements of the proletariat.

[Sidenote: _Professional prejudice and the theory of the practical character of history._]

Practical preoccupations are so strong with any one engaged in a given trade, even though it is that of a maker of books of history, as to suggest almost inevitably the strange doctrine of the _practical_ character of history, or the non-theoretic character of that form, which is the crowning result of the theoretic spirit, and which alone gives full truth--if truth is the Knowledge of Reality, and if Reality is history.

[Footnote 1: See on this point my _Philosophy of the Practical,_ part i. sect. ii. chaps, v.-vi.]

[Footnote 2: See above, Part I. Sect. I. Chap. IV.]

IV

IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY

[Sidenote: _Necessity of the historical element in philosophy._]

The necessity of philosophy as a condition of history has been made evident from the preceding considerations. It is now necessary to affirm with no less clearness the necessity of history for philosophy. If history is impossible without the logical, that is, the philosophical, element, philosophy is not possible without the intuitive, or historical element.

For a philosophic proposition, or definition, or system (as we have called it), appears in the soul of a definite individual at a definite point of time and space and in definite conditions. It is therefore historically conditioned. Without the historical conditions that demand it, the system would not be what it is. The Kantian philosophy was impossible at the time of Pericles, because it presupposes, for instance, exact natural science, which developed from the Renaissance onward. And this presupposes geographical discoveries, industry, capitalist or civil society, and so on. It presupposes the scepticism of David Hume, which in its turn presupposes the deism of the beginning of the eighteenth century, which in its turn is connected with the religious struggles in England and in all Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and so on. On the other hand, if Kant were to live again in our time, he could not write the _Critique of Pure Reason_ without modifications so profound as to make of it, not only a new book, but an altogether new philosophy, though containing within itself his old philosophy. Stiff with old age, he was even capable of ignoring the interpretations and developments of Fichte, and of ignoring Schelling. But to-day he could not ignore either of these, nor Hegel, nor Herbart, nor Schopenhauer. He could not even ignore the representatives of the mediæval philosophy, which followed the classical period of modern philosophy; the authors of positivist myths, Kantian and Hegelian scholastics, the new combinations of Platonism and Aristotelianism, that is, of pre-Kantian with post-Kantian philosophy, the new sophists and sceptics, the new Plotinians and Mystics, nor the states of soul and the facts, which condition all these things. For the rest, Kant truly lives again in our days, with a different name (and what is individuality, countersigned with the name, save a juxtaposition of syllables?) He is the philosopher of our times, in whom is continued that philosophic thought, which once took, among others, the Scoto-German name of Kant. And the philosopher of our day, whether he will it or no, cannot abandon the historical conditions in which he lives, or so act as to make that not to have happened which happened before his time. Those events are in his bones, in his flesh and blood, and it is impossible to drive them out. He must therefore take account of them, that is, know them historically. The breadth of his philosophy will depend upon the breadth of his historical knowledge. If he did not know them, but merely carried them in him as facts of life, his condition would not differ from that of any animal (or of ourselves in so far as we are animals or beings that are, or rather seem to be, completely immersed in will and practice). For the animal is precisely conditioned by the whole of nature and the whole of history, but does not know it. The meaning of the demand must therefore be understood that a truthful answer may be obtained. _History_ must be known in order to obtain the truth of _philosophy._

[Sidenote: _Historical quality of the culture required in the philosopher._]

This demand is usually expressed in the formula that the philosopher must be cultured, though it is not clear what is the quality of this culture that is said to be requisite. Some, especially in our own days, would wish the philosopher to be a physiologist, a physicist, a mathematician, that is, that his brain should be full of abstractions, which are certainly not useless (everything is worth knowing, even the triviality of girls, for even that is a part of life and of reality), but which are in no direct relation to that form of knowledge which must be the condition of philosophy. This form of knowledge is, on the contrary, history; or, as it is said (with an _a potiori_ intention), the history of philosophy, which of necessity as the history of a moment of the spirit, includes all history in itself, as we have shown above, when criticizing the divisions of history. That is to say, it is necessary to know the meaning of the problems of our own time, and this implies knowing also those of the past, in order not to take the former for the latter and so cause inextricable confusion. And to the extent that they can be of use according to the requirements of the problem, we must know also the natural, physical, and mathematical sciences. But we must _not_ know them _as stick_ and develop them as such, but rather _as historical knowledge_ concerning the state of the natural sciences, of physics, and of mathematics, in order to understand the problems that they help to raise for philosophy.

[Sidenote: _Apparent objections._]

It is vain to set against this the example of great philosophers without historical culture, as it is vain in the case of the necessity of historical knowledge for æsthetic criticism to bring forward instances of those who, although without any historical knowledge, have yet given far more true and more profound judgments upon art than the historically learned. If those judgments are true, then the critic supposed to be ignorant of history is not ignorant of it. He has somehow absorbed, scented in the air, divined with rapid perception those actual facts that were applicable to the given case. And, on the other hand, the so-called learned man will not be cultured, because his erudition is not lively and synthetic. The same happens in the case of those acute philosophers, who are said to be ignorant of the world and of history and of the thoughts of other philosophers. It cannot be denied that much or little history may be learned outside the usual course of teaching by manuals and by orderly mnemonic methods. But here, too, the exceptional mode of learning confirms the rule and does not obviate the usefulness for the majority of the customary modes of learning. On the other hand, if he who is said empirically to be without historical knowledge, but is not so in a given instance, should nevertheless prove really ignorant in other instances, where his unusual way of learning is not open to him, his philosophy also suffers. For this reason, those philosophers who are ignorant of history exhibit deficiencies that have often been deplored. They burst open doors already opened, they do not avail themselves of important results, they ignore grave difficulties and objections, they fail to probe certain problems sufficiently deeply, and show themselves too insecure and too superficial in others, and so on. Thus is the customary learning of history avenged upon them: and Herbert Spencer, who would never read Plato or Kant, is rejected, while Schelling and Hegel are again in the hands of students.

[Sidenote: _Communication of history as changing of history._]