concepts arise from ignorance, prejudice, negligence, illegitimate
private or national interests, and from other disturbing passions,
that is to say, from _insufficient conceiving of the concepts,_ or
from inexact thought, the remedy is certainly not to be sought in the
abandonment of concepts and of thought, but in correcting the former
and making perfect the latter. Abandonment would not only be cowardly,
but impossible. Having left the Eden of pure intuition and entered
the field of history, it is not given us to retrace our steps. There
is no returning to blessed and ingenuous ignorance; innocence is lost
for ever, and we must no longer aspire to it, but to virtue, which
is neither innocent nor ingenuous. Why does what seems good to the
Protestant seem bad to the Catholic? Evidently, owing to the different
conception that each forms as to this world and the world above us,
death and life, reason and revelation, criticism and authority, and so
on. It is necessary, then, to open the discussion with the enquiry as
to whether the truth is with the Protestants or with the Catholics,
or whether it be not found rather in a third view, which goes beyond
both. Once a definite result has been obtained, perplexity will be at
an end (at least for him who has attained it), and the narrative can be
constructed with as much security as the available historical sources
permit. The way indicated will seem hard; but it is the only way.
Whoever decides to retain his own opinions, received without criticism,
will perhaps provide for his own convenience, but he will renounce
history and truth. For the rest, we do not here draw up a programme for
the future, but simply establish what history is in its true nature,
and consequently how it is manifested and has _always_ been manifested.
Men in every age have discussed the concepts with which historical
reality has been interpreted and have agreed upon very many points,
as to which there is no longer any discussion. Both Catholics and
Protestants, Revolutionaries and conservatives are, as has been already
remarked, more in agreement than they were formerly; because something
has passed and penetrated from each to each, or rather the _humanity,_
which is in both, has become elevated. Scepticism accomplishes an easy
task, but uses an illusory argument, in history as in philosophy,
when it catalogues the points of disagreement. These are before the
eyes of all, just because they represent the problems which it is
important to solve. Would it not be worth while to keep in view as of
equal importance the points already solved, and to say, for example,
that historians are henceforth agreed that Anchises did not sleep with
Aphrodite, that the wolf did not suckle Romulus and Remus, and that
William Tell did not establish the liberty of the Swiss Cantons? In
short, it would not be easy to find either those who support or those
who deny Mary's immaculate conception. The Catholic writers who insist
upon such disputes are rare, and those who deny are found only in
little democratic journals of the inferior sort or of degraded taste.
[Sidenote: _Subjectivity and objectivity in history: their meaning._]
To drive _subjectivity_ out of history, in order to obtain
_objectivity,_ cannot therefore mean to drive away thought to obtain
intuition, or worse still, to obtain brute matter, which is altogether
inexpressible; but to drive away false thought, or passion that
usurps the place of truth, and to mount to true thought, rigorous
and complete. If we attain to intuition, instead of saving ourselves
from passion we shall burn in its flames. For intuition says nothing
but what we as individuals experience, suffer, and desire. It is
just intuition which, when unduly introduced into history, becomes
subjectivity _sensu deteriori;_ whereas thought is _true subjectivity,_
that of the universal, which is at the same time _true objectivity._
[Sidenote: _Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral
values. Critique._]
We have thus also solved the question (so much discussed in our day)
as to the _criterion of value_ in history, and whether judgments of
values, as well as judgments of fact belong to the province of the
historian. It is solved, because true judgments of fact, individual
judgments, are precisely judgments of value, or determinations of the
proper quality, and therefore of the meaning and value of the fact.
We admit no other criterion of value than the concept itself. For
this reason, we must also reject the distinction of the _history_ of
fact and the _criticism_ (or valuation) of it. Every history is also
criticism, and every criticism is also history; to say that a thing is
the fact which we call the _Divine Comedy_ is to say what its value
is, and so to criticize it. To think _normal_ or _neutral_ values,
as to which (according to the most modern historical theories) men
of different points of view should agree, seems at the most a mere
_symbol_ of that agreement which men are constantly seeking and
realizing in the subjectivity objectivity of thought. This will never
be a _fact_ completely agreed upon, because it is a perpetual _fieri._
It cannot be expected of the future, because it will belong to the
future, as it belongs and has belonged to the present and to the past.
[Sidenote: _Various legitimate meanings of the protests against
historical subjectivity._]
If the protest against the intrusion of subjectivity into history
cannot logically be said to have any legitimate meaning save that of a
polemic against false subjectivity in favour of true subjectivity, it
may also imply, on the literary side, a question of expediency, namely,
that in the historical work of art greater importance should be given
to the representation of facts than to the theoretical discussion of
concepts. A historical should not be transformed into a philosophical
work. But this is a question that must be studied case by case; for
what harm could it do, if a historian, beginning by writing a history,
were to end by writing a philosophic treatise? Certainly, it would not
be a greater evil than if a philosopher, becoming passionate about the
facts he gives as instances, were gradually to abandon his first plan
and produce a history in place of a system. At bottom it would do no
harm, or very little, provided that such philosophy or such historical
representation were good; and this is precisely what must be examined
case by case. A more appropriate meaning of the polemic against the
subjectivity of history is the recommendation that in narrating
history, _emphatic, negative,_ and _desiderative_ forms should
accompany logical judgments which, as such, are judgments of value,
as little as possible. These forms, it is argued, are justifiable in
relation to the present or immediate past, because they indicate the
direction of the future, but in relation to the remote past they are
usually empty and superfluous. Indeed, to rage against Marius or Sulla,
Cæsar or Pompey, Frederick Barbarossa or the burgesses of Lombardy, is
somewhat vain, because those historical personages have, in general,
no near or practical interest. But, on the other hand, it is also true
that these characters always have some near and practical interest,
and in that measure we cannot prevent history, even of the remote
past, being here and there revived with the accents of our present
and of our future. Still more legitimate is the significance of that
polemic when the intention is to blame the habit of those who assume
the functions of praise or blame, in relation not only to men, but to
historical events. They applaud paganism, abuse Christianity, weep
over the fall of the Roman Empire, deplore the formation of Islamism,
regret that Buddhism should not have been disseminated in Europe,
sympathize with the Reformation, or disapprove of Catholicism after
the Council of Trent. To them was addressed the saying that history
is not to be judged but to be narrated. But it would be more accurate
to say that history is not to be judged by the categories by which we
judge the actions of individuals, which are subject to the dialectic
of good and evil, because the action of an individual differs from the
historical event, which transcends individual wills. But the definition
of individuality and of event goes outside the gnoseology of history,
and more properly belongs to the Philosophy of the Practical.[1]
[Sidenote: _The demand for a theory of historical facts._]
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.