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.