The _periodization_ of history is subject to the same criticism. To

_think_ history is certainly _to divide it into periods_, because

thought is organism, dialectic, drama, and as such has its periods, its

beginning, its middle, and its end, and all the other ideal pauses that

a drama implies and demands. But those pauses are ideal and therefore

inseparable from thought, with which they are one, as the shadow is one

with the body, silence with sound: they are identical and changeable

with it. Christian thinkers divided history into that which preceded

and that which followed the redemption, and this periodization was not

an addition to Christian thought, but Christian thought itself. We

modern Europeans divide it into antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern

times. This periodization has been subject to a great deal of refined

criticism on the part of those who hold that it came to be introduced

anyhow, almost dishonestly, without the authority of great names, and

without the advice of the philosophers and the methodologists being

asked on the matter. But it has maintained itself and will maintain

itself so long as our consciousness shall persist in its present phase.

The fact of its having been insensibly formed would appear to be

rather a merit than a demerit, because this means that it was not due

to the caprice of an individual, but has followed the development of

modern consciousness itself. When antiquity has nothing more to tell us

who still feel the need of studying Greek and Latin, Greek philosophy

and Roman law; when the Middle Ages have been superseded (and they have

not been superseded yet); when a new social form, different from that

which emerged from the ruins of the Middle Ages, has supplanted our

own; then the problem itself and the historical outlook which derives

from it will also be changed, and perhaps antiquity and the Middle Ages

and modern times will all be contained within a single epoch, and the

pauses be otherwise distributed. And what has been said of these great

periods is to be understood of all the others, which vary according to

the variety of historical material and the various modes of viewing it.

It has sometimes been said that every periodization has a 'relative'

value. But we must say 'both relative and absolute,' like all thought,

it being understood that the periodization is intrinsic to thought and

determined by the determination of thought.

However, the practical needs of chroniclism and of learning make

themselves felt here also. Just as in metrical treatises the internal

rhythm of a poem is resolved into external rhythm and divided into

syllables and feet, into long and short vowels, tonic and rhythmic

accents, into strophes and series of strophes, and so on, so the

internal time of historical thought (that time which is thought

itself) is derived from chroniclism converted into external time, or

temporal series, of which the elements are spatially separated from one

another. Scheme and facts are no longer one, but two, and the facts

are disposed according to the scheme, and divided according to the

scheme into major and minor cycles (for example, according to hours,

days, months, years, centuries, and millenniums, where the calculation

is based upon the rotations and revolutions of the earth upon itself

and round the sun). Such is _chronology_, by means of which we know

that the histories of Sparta, Athens, and Rome filled the thousand

years preceding Christ, that of the Lombards, the Visigoths, and the

Franks the first millennium after Christ, and that we are still in the

second millennium. This mode of chronology can be pursued by means of

particularizing incidents thus: that the Empire of the West ended in

A.D. 476 (although it did not really end then or had already ended

previously); that Charlemagne the Frank was crowned Emperor at Rome

by Pope Leo III in the year 800; that America was discovered in 1492,

and that the Thirty Years War ended in 1648. It is of the greatest

use to us to know these things, or (since we really _know_ nothing

in this way) to acquire the capacity of so checking references to

facts that we are able to find them easily and promptly when occasion

arises. Certainly no one thinks of speaking ill of chronologies and

chronographies and tables and synoptic views of history, although in

using them we run the risk (and in what thing done by man does he not

run a risk?) of seeing worthy folk impressed with the belief that the

number produces the event, as the hand of the clock, when it touches

the sign of the hour, makes the clock strike; or (as an old professor

of mine used to say) that the curtain fell upon the acting of ancient

history in 476, to rise again immediately afterward on the beginning of

the Middle Ages.

But such fancies are not limited to the minds of the ingenuous and

inattentive; they constitute the base of that error owing to which a

distinction of periods, which shall be what is called _objective and

natural_, is desired and sought after. Christian chronographers had

already introduced this ontological meaning into chronology, making

the millenniums of the world's history correspond with the days of

the creation or the ages of man's life. Finally, Ferrari in Italy and

Lorenz in Germany (the latter ignorant of his Italian predecessor)

conceived a theory of historical periods according to generations,

calculated in periods of thirty-one years and a fraction, or of

thirty-three years and a fraction, and grouped as tetrads or triads, in

periods of a hundred and twenty-five years or a century. But, without

dwelling upon numerical and chronographic schemes, all doctrines that

represent the history of nations as proceeding according to the stages

of development of the individual, of his psychological development,

of the categories of the spirit, or of anything else, are due to

the same error, which is that of rendering periodization external

and natural. All are mythological, if taken in the naturalistic

sense, save when these designations are employed empirically--that

is to say, when chronology is used in chroniclism and erudition in a

legitimate manner. We must also repeat a warning as to the care to be

employed in recognizing important problems, which sometimes have first

appeared through the medium of those erroneous inquiries, and as to

the truths that have been seen or caught a glimpse of by these means.

This exempts us (as we remarked above in relation to the criteria of

choice) from examining those doctrines in the particularity of their

various determinations, because in this respect, if their assumption be

obviously fantastic, their value is consequently _nil_. _Nil_, as the

value of all those æsthetic constructions is _nil_ which claim to pass

from the abstractions, by means of which they reduce the organism of

the work of art to fragments for practical ends, to the explanation of

the nature of art and to the judgment and history of the creations of

human imagination.

VIII

DISTINCTION (SPECIAL HISTORIES) AND DIVISION

The conception of history that we have reached--namely, that which has

not its documents outside itself, but in itself, which has not its

final and causal explanation outside itself, but within itself, which

has not philosophy outside itself, but coincides with philosophy, which

has not the reason for its definite form and rhythm outside itself, but

within itself--identifies history with the act of thought itself, which

is always philosophy and history together. And with this it debarrasses

it of the props and plasters applied to it as though to an invalid in

need of external assistance. For they really did produce an infirmity

through their very insistence in first imagining and then treating a

non-existent infirmity.

Doubtless the autonomy thus attained is a great advantage; but at first

sight it is not free from a grave objection. When all the fallacious

distinctions formerly believed in have been cancelled, it seems that

nothing remains for history as an act of thought but the immediate

consciousness of the individual-universal, in which all distinctions

are submerged and lost. And this is mysticism, which is admirably

adapted for feeling oneself at unity with God, but is not adapted for

thinking the world nor for acting in the world.

Nor does it seem useful to add that unity with God does not exclude

consciousness of diversity, of change, of becoming. For it can

be objected that consciousness of diversity either derives from

the individual and intuitive element, and in this case it is

incomprehensible how such an element can subsist in its proper form of

intuition, in thought, which always universalizes; or if it is said

to be the result of the act of thought itself, then the distinction,

believed to have been abolished, reappears in a strengthened form,

and the asserted indistinct simplicity of thought remains shaken. A

mysticism which should insist upon particularity and diversity, a

_historical mysticism,_ in fact, would be a contradiction in terms, for

mysticism is unhistorical and anti-historical by its very nature.

But these objections retain their validity precisely when the act of

thought is conceived in the mystical manner--that is to say, not as

an act of thought, but as something negative, the simple result of

the negation by reason of empirical distinctions, which certainly

leaves thought free of illusions, but not yet truly full of itself.

To sum up, mysticism, which is a violent reaction from naturalism and

transcendency, yet retains traces of what it has denied, because it

is incapable of substituting anything for it, and thus maintains its

presence, in however negative a manner. But the really efficacious

negation of empiricism and transcendency, their positive negation, is

brought about not by means of mysticism, but of _idealism_; not in

the immediate, but in the _mediated_ consciousness; not in indistinct

unity, but in the unity that is _distinction_, and as such truly

thought.

The act of thought is the consciousness of the spirit that is

consciousness; and therefore that act is auto-consciousness. And

auto-consciousness implies distinction in unity, distinction between

subject and object, theory and practice, thought and will, universal

and particular, imagination and intellect, utility and morality, or

however these distinctions of and in unity are formulated, and whatever

may be the historical forms and denominations which the eternal system

of distinctions, _perennis philosophia,_ may assume. To think is to

judge, and to judge is to distinguish while unifying, in which the

distinguishing is not less real than the unifying, and the unifying

than the distinguishing--that is to say, they are real, not as two

diverse realities, but as one reality, which is dialectical unity

(whether it be called unity or distinction).

The first consequence to be drawn from this conception of the spirit

and of thought is that when empirical distinctions have been overthrown

history does not fall into the indistinct; when the will-o'-the-wisps

have been extinguished, darkness does not supervene, because the light

of the distinction is to be found in history itself. History is thought

by judging it, with that judgment which is not, as we have shown,

the evaluation of sentiments, but the intrinsic knowledge of facts.

And here its unity with philosophy is all the more evident, because

the better philosophy penetrates and refines its distinctions, the

better it penetrates the particular; and the closer its embrace of the

particular, the closer its possession of its own proper conceptions.

Philosophy and historiography progress together, indissolubly united.

Another consequence to be deduced from the above, and one which

will perhaps seem to be more clearly connected with the practice of

historiography, is the refutation of the false idea of a _general

history,_ superior to _special histories._ This has been called a

history of histories, and is supposed to be true and proper history,

having beneath it political, economic, and institutional histories,

moral history or the history of the sentiments and ethical ideals, the

history of poetry and art, the history of thought and of philosophy.

But were this so, a dualism would arise, with the usual result of every

dualism, that each one of the two terms, having been ill distinguished,

reveals itself as empty. In this case, either general history shows

itself to be empty, having nothing to do when the special histories

have accomplished their work, or particular histories do so, when

they fail even to pick up the crumbs of the banquet, all of which has

been voraciously devoured by the other. Sometimes recourse is had to

a feeble expedient, and to general history is accorded the treatment

of one of the subjects of the special histories, the latter being

then grouped apart from that. Of this arrangement the best that can

be said is that it is purely verbal and does not designate a logical

distinction and opposition, and the worst that can happen is that a

real value should be attributed to it, because in this case a fantastic

hierarchy is established, which makes it impossible to understand the

genuine development of the facts. And there is practically no special

history that has not been promoted to be a general history, now as

_political_ or _social_ history, to which those of literature, art,

philosophy, religion, and the lesser sides of life should supply an

appendix; now as _history of the ideas or progress of the mind,_ where

social history and all the others are placed in the second line; now as

_economic history,_ where all the others are looked upon as histories

or chronicles of 'superstructures' derived from economic development in

an illusory manner, while the former is held to have developed in some

mysterious way by means of unknown powers, without thought and will,

or producing thought and will, in fancies and velleities, like so many

bubbles on the surface of its course. We must be firm in maintaining

against the theory of _general_ history that there _does not exist

anything real but special histories,_ because thought thinks facts to

the extent that it discerns a special aspect of them, and only and

always constructs histories of ideas, of imaginations, of political

actions, of apostolates, and the like.

But it is equally just and advantageous to maintain the opposite

thesis: that _nothing exists but general history._ In this way is

refuted the false notion of the speciality of histories, understood as

a juxtaposition of specialities. This fallacy is correctly noted by the

critics in all histories which expose the various orders of facts one

after the other as so many strata and (to employ the critics' word)

compartments or little boxes, containing political history, industrial

and commercial history, history of customs, religious history, history

of literature and of art, and so on, under so many separate headings.

These divisions are merely literary, they may possess some utility as

such, but in the case under consideration they do not fulfil merely

a literary function, but attempt that of historical understanding,

and thereby give evidence of their defect, in thus presenting these

histories as without relation between one another, not dialecticized,

but aggregated. It is quite clear that _history_ remains to be

written after the writing of those _histories_ in this disjointed

manner. Abstract distinction and abstract unity are both equally

misunderstandings of concrete distinction and concrete unity, which is

relation.

And when the relation is not broken and history is thought in the

concrete, it is seen that to think one aspect is to think all the

others at the same time. Thus it is impossible to understand completely

the doctrine, say, of a philosopher, without having to some extent

recourse to the personality of the man himself, and, by distinguishing

the philosopher from the man, at the same time qualifying not only the

philosopher but the man, and uniting these two distinct characteristics

as a relation of life and philosophy. The same is to be said of the

distinction between the philosopher as philosopher and as orator

or artist, as subject to his private passions or as rising to the

execution of his duty, and so on. This means that we cannot think the

history of philosophy save as at the same time social, political,

literary, religious, and ethical history, and so on. This is the source

of the illusion that one in particular of these histories is the

whole of them, or that that one from which a start is made, and which

answers to the predilections and to the competence of the writer, is

the foundation of all the others. It also explains why it is sometimes

said that the 'history of philosophy' is also the 'philosophy of

history,' or that 'social history' is the true 'history of philosophy,'

and so on. A history of philosophy thoroughly thought out is truly the

whole of history (and in like manner a history of literature or of any

other form of the spirit), not because it annuls the other in itself,

but because all the others are present in it. Hence the demand that

historians shall acquire universal minds and a doctrine that shall

also be in a way universal, and the hatred of specialist historians,

pure philosophers, pure men of letters, pure politicians, or pure

economists, who, owing precisely to their one-sidedness, fail even to

understand the speciality that they claim to know in its purity, but

possess only in skeleton form that is to say, in its abstractness.

And here a distinction becomes clear to us, with which it is impossible

to dispense in thinking history: the distinction between _form_ and

_matter_, owing to which, for example, we understand art by referring

it to matter (emotions, sentiments, passions, etc.) to which the artist

has given form; or philosophy by referring it to the facts which

gave rise to the problems that the thinker formulated and solved, or

the action of the politician by referring it to the aspirations and

ideas with which he was faced, and which supplied the material he has

shaped with genius, as an artist of practical life--that is to say, we

understand these things by always distinguishing an _external_ from

an _internal_ history, or an external history that is made into an

internal history. This distinction of matter and form, of external and

internal, would give rise again to the worst sort of dualism, would

lead us to think of the pragmatical imagination of man who strives

against his enemy nature, if it did not assume an altogether internal

and dialectical meaning in its true conception. Because from what has

been said it is easy to see that external and internal are not two

realities or two forms of reality, but that external and internal,

matter and form, both appear in turn as form in respect to one another,

and this materialization of each to idealize itself in the other

is the perpetual movement of the spirit as relation and circle: a

circle that is progress just because neither of these forms has the

privilege of functioning solely as form, and neither has the misfortune

of functioning solely as matter. What is the matter of artistic and

philosophical history? What is called social and moral history? And

what is the matter of this history? Artistic and philosophical history.

From this clearing up of the relation between matter and form, that

false mode of history is refuted which sets facts on one side and ideas

on the other, as two rival elements, and is therefore never able to

pay its debt and show how ideas are generated from facts and facts

from ideas, because that generation must be conceived in its truth as a

perpetually rendering vain of one of the elements in the unity of the

other.

If history is based upon distinction (unity) and coincides with

philosophy, the high importance that research into the autonomy of one

or the other special history attains in historiographical development

is perfectly comprehensible, but this is merely the reflection of

philosophical research, and is often troubled and lacking in precision.

All know what a powerful stimulus the new conception of imagination

and art gave to the conception of history, and therefore also to

mythology and religion, which were being developed with slowness and

difficulty during the eighteenth to triumph at the beginning of the

nineteenth century. This is set down to the creation of the history

of poetry and myth in the works of Vico in the first place and then

of Herder and others, and of the history of the figurative arts in

the works of Winckelmann and others. And to the clearer conception of

philosophy, law, customs, and language is due their renewal in the

respective historiographical fields, at the hands of Hegel, Savigny,

and Humboldt, and other creators and improvers of history, celebrated

on this account. This also explains why there has been so much dispute

as to whether history should be described as history of the state or as

history of culture, and as to whether the history of culture represents

an original aspect beyond that of the state or greater than it, as to

whether the progress narrated in history is only intellectual or also

practical and moral, and so on. These discussions must be referred to

the fundamental philosophical inquiry into the forms of the spirit,

their distinction and relation, and to the precise mode of relation of

each one to the other.[1]

But although history distinguishes and unifies, it never

_divides_--that is to say, _separates_; and the _divisions of history_

which have been and are made do not originate otherwise than as the

result of the same practical and abstractive process that we have

seen break up the actuality of living history to collect and arrange

the inert materials in the temporal scheme, rendered extrinsic.

Histories already produced, and as such past, receive in this way

titles (every thought is 'without title' in its actuality--that is to

say, it has only itself for title), and each one is separated from

the other, and all of them, thus separated, are classified under more

or less general empirical conceptions, by means of classifications

that more or less cross one another. We may admire copious lists of

this sort in the books of methodologists, all of them proceeding,

as is inevitable, according to one or the other of these general

criteria: the criterion of the _quality_ of the objects (histories

of religions, customs, ideas, institutions, etc., etc.), and that of

_temporal-spatial_ arrangement (European, Asiatic, American, ancient,

medieval, of modern times, of ancient Greece, of ancient Rome, of

modern Greece, of the Rome of the Middle Ages, etc.); in conformity

with the abstract procedure which, when dividing the concept, is led

to posit on the one hand _abstract forms of the spirit_ (objects) and

on the other _abstract intuitions_ (space and time). I shall not say

that those titles and divisions are useless, nor even those tables,

but shall limit myself to the' remark that the history of philosophy,

of art, or of any other ideally distinct history, when understood as a

definite book or discourse, becomes empirical for the reason already

given, that true distinction is ideal, and a discourse or a book in

its concreteness contains not only distinction but unity and totality,

and to look upon either as incorporating only one side of the real is

arbitrary. And I shall also observe that as there are histories of

philosophy and of art in the empirical sense, so also nothing forbids

our talking in the same sense of a general history, separate from

special histories, indeed even of a history of progress and one of

decadence, of good and evil, of truth and error.

The confusion between division and distinction--that is to say, between

the empirical consideration that breaks up history into special

histories and the philosophical consideration which always unifies

and distinguishes as it unifies--is the cause of errors analogous to

those that we have seen to result from such a process. To this are due

above all the many disquisitions on the 'problem' and on the 'limits'

of this or that history or group of special histories empirically

constituted. The problem does not exist, and the limits are impossible

to assign because they are conventional, as is finally recognized with

much trouble, and as could be recognized with much less trouble if a

start were made, not from the periphery, but from the centre--that is

to say, from gnoseological analysis. A graver error is the creation of

an infinity of _entia imaginationis_, taken for metaphysical entities

and forms of the spirit, and the pretension that arises from this of

developing the history of abstractions as though they were so many

forms of the spirit with independent lives of their own, whereas the

spirit is one. Hence the innumerable otiose problems with fantastic

solutions met with in historical books, which it is here unnecessary

to record. Every one is now able to draw these obvious consequences

for himself and to make appropriate reflections concerning them. It

is further obvious that the _entia imaginations,_ in the same way as

the 'choice' of facts, and the chronological schematization or dating

of them, enter as a subsidiary element into any concrete exposition of

historical thought, because the distinction of thinking and abstraction

is an ideal distinction, which operates only in the unity of the spirit.

[1] See Appendix II.

IX

THE 'HISTORY OF NATURE' AND HISTORY

We must cease the process of classifying referred to just now, and

also that of the illusion of naturalism connected with it, by means

of which imaginary entities created by abstraction are changed into

historical facts and classificatory schemes into history, if we wish

to understand the difference between history that is history and that

due to what are called the natural sciences. This is also called

history--_'history of nature'_--but is so only in name. Some few years

ago a lively protest was made[1] against the confusion of these two

forms of mental labour, one of which offers us genuine history, such as

might, for instance, be that of the Peloponnesian War or of Hannibal's

wars or of ancient Egyptian civilization, and the other a spurious

history, such as that known as the history of animal organisms, of the

earth's structure or geology, of the formation of the solar system

or cosmogony. It was observed with reason that in many treatises

the one has been wrongly connected with the other--that is to say,

history of civilization with history of nature, as though the former

follows the latter historically. The bottomless abyss between the two

was pointed out. This has been observed, however, in a confused way

by all, and better by historians of purely historical temperament,

who have an instinctive repugnance for natural history and hold

themselves carefully aloof from it. It was remembered with reason that

the history of historians has always the individually determinate as

its object, and proceeds by internal reconstruction, whereas that of

the naturalists depends upon types and abstractions and proceeds by

analogies. Finally, this so-called history or _quasi-history_ was very

accurately defined as an apparently chronological arrangement of things

spatially distinct, and it was proposed to describe it with a new and

proper name, that of _Metastoria._

Indeed, constructions of this sort are really nothing but

classificatory schemes, from the more simple to the more complex.

Their terms are obtained by abstract analyses and generalization, and

their series appears to the imagination as a history of the successive

development of the more complex from the more simple. Their right to

exist as classificatory schemes is incontestable, and their utility is

also incontestable, for they avail themselves of imagination to assist

learning and to aid the memory.

This only becomes contestable when they are estranged from themselves,

lose their real nature, lay claim to illegitimate functions, and

take their imaginary historicity too seriously. We find this in the

metaphysic of naturalism, especially in _evolutionism,_ which has

been its most recent form. This is due, not so much to the men of

science (who are as a rule cautious and possess a more or less clear

consciousness of the limits of those schemes and series) as to the

dilettante scientists and dilettante philosophers to whom we owe the

many books that undertake to narrate the origin of the world, and

which, aided by the acrisia of their authors, run on without meeting

any obstacle, from the cell, indeed from the nebula, to the French

Revolution, and even to the socialist movements of the nineteenth

century. 'Universal histories,' and therefore cosmological romances

(as we have already remarked in relation to universal histories), are

composed, not of pure thought, which is criticism, but of thought

mingled with imagination, which finds its outlet in myths. It is

useless to prove in detail that the evolutionists of to-day are

creators of myths, and that they weary themselves with attempts to

write the first chapters of Genesis in modern style (their description

is more elaborate, but they confuse such description with history in

a manner by no means inferior to that of Babylonian or Israelitish

priests), because this becomes evident as soon as such works are placed

in their proper position. Their logical origin will at once make clear

their true character.

But setting aside these scientific monstrosities, already condemned

by the constant attitude of restraint and scepsis toward them on the

part of all scientifically trained minds--condemned, too, by the

very fact that they have had to seek and have found their fortune

at the hands of the crowd or 'great public,' and have fallen to the

rank of popular propaganda--we must here determine more precisely

how these classificatory schemes of historiographical appearance are

formed and how they operate. With this object, it is well to observe

that classificatory schemes and apparent histories do not appear to

be confined to the field of what are called the natural sciences or

sub-human world, but appear also in that of the moral sciences or

sciences of the human world. And to adduce simple and perspicuous

examples, it often happens that in the abstract analysis of language

and the positing of the types of the parts of speech, noun, verb,

adjective, pronoun, and so on, or in the analysis of the word into

syllables and sounds, or of style into proper or metaphorical words

and into various classes of metaphors, we construct classes that go

from the more simple to the more complex. This gives rise to the

illusion of history of language, exposed as the successive acquisition

of the various parts of speech or as the passage from the single

sound to the syllable (monosyllabic languages), from the syllable to

the aggregate of syllables (plurisyllabic languages), from words to

propositions, metres, rhymes, and so on. These are imaginary histories

that have never been developed elsewhere than in the studies of

scientists. In like manner, literary styles that have been abstractly

distinguished and arranged in series of increasing complexity (for

example, lyric, epic, drama) have given rise and continue to give

rise to the thought of a schematic arrangement of poetry, which, for

example, should appear during a first period as lyric, a second as

epic, a third as drama.

The same has happened with regard to the classifications of abstract

political, economic, philosophical forms, and so on, all of which have

been followed by their shadows in the shape of imaginative history. The

repugnance that historians experience in attaching their narratives

to naturalistic-mythological prologues--that is to say, in linking

together in matrimony a living being and a corpse--is also proved by

their reluctance to admit scraps of abstract history into concrete

history, for they at once reveal their heterogeneity in regard to one

another by their mere appearance. De Sanctis has often been reproached

for not having begun his _History of Italian Literature_ with an

account of the origins of the Italian language and of its relations

with Latin, and even with the linguistic family of Indo-European

languages, and of the races that inhabit the various parts of Italy.

An attempt has even been made to correct the design of that classic

work by supplying, with a complete lack of historical sense, the

introductions and additions that are not needed. But de Sanctis,

who took great pains to select the best point of departure for the

narrative of the history of Italian literature, and finally decided

to begin with a brief sketch of the state of culture at the Suabian

court and of the Sicilian poetical school, did not hesitate a moment

in rejecting all abstractions of languages and races which to his true

historical sense did not appear to be reconcilable with the _tenzone_

of Ciullo, with the rhythms of Friar Jacob, or with the ballades of

Guido Cavalcanti, which are quite concrete things.

We must also remember that plans for classification and

pseudo-historical arrangements of their analogies are created not only

upon the bodies of histories that are living and really reproducible

and rethinkable, but also upon those that are dead--that is to say,

upon news items, documents, and monuments. This observation makes

more complete the identification of imaginary histories arising from

the natural sciences with those which have their source in the moral

sciences. The foundation of both is therefore very often not historical

intelligence, but, on the contrary, the lack of it, and their end not

only that of aiding living history and keeping it alive, but also the

mediate end of assisting in the prompt handling of the remains and the

cinders of the vanished world, the inert residues of history.

The efficacy of this enlargement of the concept of abstract history,

which is analogical or naturalizing in respect to the field known

as 'spiritual' (and thus separated from that empirically known as

'natural'), cannot be doubted by one who knows and remembers the great

consequences that philosophy draws from the resolution of the realistic

concept of 'nature' in the idealistic conception of 'construction,'

which the human spirit makes of reality, looking upon it as nature.

Kant worked upon the solution of this problem indefatigably and with

subtlety; he gave to it the direction that it has followed down to

our own days. And the consequence that we draw from it, in respect

to the problem that now occupies us, is that an error was committed

when, moved by the legitimate desire of distinguishing abstract from

concrete history, naturalizing history from thinking history, genuine

from fictitious history, a sort of agnosticism was reached, as a final

result, by means of limiting history to the field of humanity, which

was said to be cognoscible, and declaring all the rest to be the object

of metastoria and the limit of human knowledge. This conclusion would

lead again to a sort of dualism, though in a lofty sphere. But if

metastoria also appears, as we have seen, in the human field, it is

clear that the distinction as formulated stands in need of correction;

and the agnosticism founded upon it vacillates and falls. There is not

a double object before thought, man and nature, the one capable of

treatment in one way, the other in another way, the first cognizable,

and the second uncognizable and capable only of being constructed

abstractly; but thought always thinks history, the history of reality

that is one, and beyond thought there is nothing, for the natural

object becomes a myth when it is affirmed as object, and shows itself

in its true reality as nothing else but the human spirit itself, which

schematized history that has been lived and thought, or the materials

of the history that has already been lived and thought. The saying that

nature has no history is to be understood in the sense that nature as

a rational being capable of thought has not history, because it is

not--or, let us say, it is nothing that is real. The opposite saying,

that nature is also formative and possesses historical life, is to be

taken in the other sense that reality, the sole reality (comprehending

man and nature in itself, which are only empirically and abstractly

separate), is all development and life.

What substantial difference can ever be discovered on the one hand

between geological stratifications and the remains of vegetables

and animals, of which it is possible to construct a prospective and

indeed a serial arrangement, but which it is never possible to rethink

in the living dialectic of their genesis, and on the other hand the

relics of what is called human history, and not only that called

prehistorical, but even the historical documents of our history of

yesterday, which we have forgotten and no longer understand, and which

we can certainly classify and arrange in a series, and build castles

in the air about or allow our fancies to wander among, but which it is

no longer possible really to think again? Both cases, which have been

arbitrarily distinguished, are reducible to one single case. Even in

what is called 'human history' there exists a 'natural history,' and

what is called 'natural history' also was once 'human' history--that

is to say, spiritual, although to us who have left it so far behind

it seems to be almost foreign, so mummified and mechanicized has it

become, if we glance at it but summarily and from the outside. Do you

wish to understand the true history of a Ligurian or Sicilian neolithic

man? First of all, try if it be possible to make yourself mentally

into a Ligurian or Sicilian neolithic man; and if it be not possible,

or you do not care to do this, content yourself with describing and

classifying and arranging in a series the skulls, the utensils, and

the inscriptions belonging to those neolithic peoples. Do you wish to

understand the history of a blade of grass? First and foremost, try

to make yourself into a blade of grass, and if you do not succeed,

content yourself with analysing the parts and even with disposing them

in a kind of imaginative history. This leads to the idea from which

I started in making these observations about historiography, as to

history being _contemporary_ history and chronicle being past history.

We take advantage of the idea and at the same time confirm that truth

by solving with its aid the antithesis between a history that is

'history' and a 'history of nature,' which, although it is history,

was supposed to obey laws strangely at variance with those of the only

history. It solves this antithesis by placing the second in the lower

rank of _pseudo-history._

[1] By the economist Professor Gotti, at the seventh congress of

German historians, held at Heidelberg. The lecture can be read in

print under the anything but clear or exact title of _Die Grenzen der

Geschichte_ (Leipzig, Duncker u. Humblot, 1904).

APPENDIX I

ATTESTED EVIDENCE

If true history is that of which an interior verification is possible,

and is therefore history ideally contemporary and present, and if

history by witnesses is lacking in truth and is not even false, but

just neither false nor true (not a _hoc est_ but a _fertur_), a

legitimate question arises as to the origin and function of those

innumerable propositions resumed from evidence critically thrashed out

and 'held to be true,' although not verified, and perhaps never to be

verified, but nevertheless employed even in most serious historical

treatment. When we are writing the history of the doctrine known as

the _coincidentia oppositorum,_ or of the poem called _I sepolcri,_

the Latin of the Cardinal di Cusa and the verse of Foscolo obviously

belong to us, both as to the thoughts and the actual words, pronounced

by ourselves to ourselves, and the certainty of those historical facts

is at the same time logical truth. But that the _De docta ignorantia_

was written between the end of 1439 and the early part of 1440, and

Foscolo's poem on the return of the poet to Italy after his long

military service in France, is evidence founded upon proofs, as to

which we can only say that they are to be considered valid, because

they have been to some extent _attested,_ but we cannot claim them to

be true. No amount of acute mental labour upon them can prevent another

document or the better reading of an old document destroying them.

Nevertheless, no one will treat of the works of the Cusan or of Foscolo

without availing himself of the biographical details as to their

authors which have been preserved.

An esteemed methodologist of our day has been tempted to found the

faith placed in this order of evidence upon a sort of telepathy of

the past, an almost spiritualistic revival. But there is nothing

so mysterious in the genesis of that belief as to need a risky and

fantastic explanation, to which even Horace's Jew would not give

credence. On the contrary, it is a question of something that we can

observe in process of formation in our private life of every day. We

are noting down in our diary, for instance, certain of our acts, or

striking the balance of our account. After a certain interval has

elapsed those facts fade from memory and the only way of affirming to

ourselves that they have happened and must be considered true is the

evidence of our notes: the document bears witness; trust the book. We

behave in a similar way in respect to the statements of others on the

authority of their diaries or account-books. We presume that if the

thing has been written down it answers to the truth. Doubtless this

assumption, like every assumption, may turn out to be false in fact,

owing to the note having been made in a moment of distraction or of

hallucination, or too late, when the memory of the fact was already

imprecise and lacking in certainty, or because it was capriciously

made or made with the object of deceiving others. But just for this

reason, written evidence is not usually accepted with closed eyes;

its verisimilitude is examined and we confront it with other written

evidence, we investigate the probity and accuracy of the writer or

witness. It is just for this reason that the penal code threatens with

pains and penalties those who alter or falsify documents. And although

these and other subtle and severe precautions do not in certain cases

prevent fraud, deception, and error (in the same way that the tribunals

established for the purpose of condemning the guilty often send away

the guilty unpunished and sometimes condemn the innocent), yet the use

of documents and evidence works out on the whole in accordance with the

truth; it is held to be useful and worthy of support and encouragement,

because the injuries that it is liable to cause are greatly inferior to

those that it prevents.

Now what men do with regard to their private affairs in daily life may

be said to be done on a large scale by the human race when it delivers

itself of the load of innumerable facts and fixes them externally where

they are recoverable in a weakened form as unverifiable documentary

evidence, yet are nevertheless such that as a whole we are justified

in looking upon them end treating them as true. Historical faith

then is not the result of telepathy or spiritualism, but of a wise

economic provision, which the spirit continues to realize. In this

way we understand historical work directed toward the prevention of

alterations and deformations, and its acceptation of certain testimony,

as 'what must be held to be true in the present state of science,' and

its graduation of the rest as uncertain, probable, and most probable

to be sometimes accepted in the expectation of ulterior inquiries.

Finally, it explains the dislike of 'hypercriticism' when, not content

with a constant refinement of criticism, hypercriticism contests the

value of the most ingenuous and authoritative testimony. The reason is

that it thus breaks the rules of the game that is being played _sub

regula,_ and only serves at the most to remind those apt to forget it

that history by evidence is at bottom an altogether external history,

never fundamental, true history, which is contemporary and present.

This genesis or nature of 'attested' evidence already contains the

answer to the other question as to its function. It is clear that this

cannot be to posit true history or to take its place, but to supply it

with those secondary particulars which it would not be worth while to

make the effort of keeping alive and complete in the mind, for this

effort would result in damaging what is most important to us. Finally,

whether the De docta ignorantia were written some time earlier or

later is something that may quite well be determined by a different

interpretation of this or that thought of Cusanus, but it does not

affect the function that the doctrine of the coincidence of opposites

exercises in the formation of logical science. Again, whether the

Sepolcri was composed or planned prior to Foscolo's visit to France

would without doubt change to some extent our representation of the

gradual development of the soul and genius of the poet, but it would

hardly at all change our mode of interpreting his great ode. Those

who despair of historical truth, owing to the lack of a verifiable

certainty of some particulars, or to the uncertainty and dubiety that

surrounds it, resemble him who, having forgotten the chronicle of his

life in this or that year, should think that he did not know himself

in his present condition, which is both the recapitulation of his past

and carries with it his past in all that it really concerns him to

know. But, on the other hand, attested evidence that has been field

to be true is a stimulus to us to search ourselves more closely, an

enrichment of what we have found by means of analysis and meditation

and a confirmation or proof of our thoughts, which are not to be

neglected, especially when true evidence and attested evidence agree

with one another. To refuse the assistance and the facilities afforded

by attested evidence, owing to the fear that some of it may prove

false, or because all of it possesses an external and somewhat general

and vague character, would be to refuse _the authority of the human

race,_ and so to commit the sin of Descartes and of Malebranche. This

great refusal does not concern or assist the understanding of history.

All that does matter and does assist is that authority--including the

authority of the human race--should never be allowed to take the place

of the _thought of humanity,_ to which, in any case, belongs the first

place.

APPENDIX II

ANALOGY AND ANOMALY OF SPECIAL HISTORIES

In the course of the preceding theoretical explanations we have denied

both the idea of a _universal history_ (in time and space)[1] and that

of a _general history_ (of the spirit in its indiscriminate generality

or unity),[2] and have insisted instead upon the opposite view with its

two clauses: that history is always _particular_ and always _special,_

and that these two determinations constitute precisely concrete and

effective _universality_ and concrete and effective _unity._ What has

been declared impossible, then, does not represent in any way a loss,

for it is on the one hand fictitious universality or the universality

of _fancy,_ and on the other abstract _universality,_ or, if it be

preferred, _confused_ universality. So-called universal histories

have therefore shown themselves to be particular histories, which

have assumed that title for purposes of literary notoriety, or as

collections, views, and chroniclistical compilations of particular

histories, or, finally, as romances. In like manner, general inclusive

histories are either so only in name, or set different histories side

by side, or they are metaphysical and metaphorical playthings.

As a result of this double but converging negation, it is also

advisable to refute a common and deeply rooted belief (which we

ourselves at one time shared to some extent)[3] that we should arrive

at the re-establishment of the universality of the fancy: or that

there are some among the special histories, constituted according

to the various forms of the spirit (general and individual only

in so far as every form of the spirit is the whole spirit in that

form), which require universal treatment and others only treatment

as monographs. The typical instance generally adduced is that of

the difference between the history of philosophy and the history of

poetry or of art. The subject of the former is supposed to be the one

great philosophical problem that interests all men, of the latter

the sentimental or imaginative problems of particular moments, or at

the most of particular artists. Thus the former is supposed to be

continuous, the latter discontinuous, the former capable of complete

universal vision, the second only of a sequence of particular visions.

But a more 'realistic' conception of philosophy deprives it of this

privilege as compared with the history of art and poetry or of any

other special history; for, appearances notwithstanding, it is not

true that men have concentrated upon one philosophical problem only,

whose successive solutions, less and less inadequate, compose a single

line of progress, the universal history of the human spirit, affording

support and unification to all other histories. The opposite is the

truth: the philosophical problems that men have treated of and will

treat of are infinite, and each one of them is always particularly

and individually determined. The illusion as to the uniqueness of the

problem is due to logical misapprehension, increased by historical

contingencies, whence a problem which owing to religious motives seemed

supreme has been looked upon as unique or fundamental, and groupings

and generalizations made for practical ends have been held to be real

identity and unity.[4] 'Universal' histories of philosophy, too, like

the others, when we examine them with a good magnifying glass, are

revealed as either particular histories of the problem that engages the

philosopher-historian, or arbitrary artificial constructions, or tables

and collections of many different historical sequences, in the manner

of a manual or encyclopædia of philosophical history. Certainly nothing

forbids the composition of abridgments of philosophical histories,

containing classifications of particular problems and representing the

principal thinkers of all peoples and of all times as occupied with one

or another class of problem. This, however, is always a chroniclistical

and naturalistic method of treating the history of philosophy, which

only really lives when a new thinker connects the problems already set

in the past and its intrinsic antecedents with the definite problem

that occupies his attention. He provisionally sets aside others with

a different connexion, though without for that reason suppressing

them, intending rather to recall them when another problem makes

their presence necessary. It is for this reason that even in those

abridgments that seem to be the most complete and 'objective' (that

is to say, 'material') a certain selection does appear, due to the

theoretical interest of the writer, who never altogether ceases to be a

historiographer-philosopher. The procedure is in fact just that of the

history of art and poetry, where what is really historical treatment,

living and complete, is the thought or criticism of individual poetical

personalities, and the rest a table of criticisms, an abridgment due

to contiguity of time or place, affinity of matter or similarity of

temperament, or to degrees of artistic excellence. Nor must we say that

every philosophic problem is linked to all the others and is always a

problem of the whole of philosophy, thus differing from the cases of

poetry and art, for there is no diversity here either, and the whole of

history and the entire universe are immanent in every single work of

art.

Now that we have likewise reduced philosophies of history to the rank

of particular histories, it is scarcely necessary to demonstrate

that the demand being made in several quarters for a 'universal'

or 'general' history of science is without foundation. For such

a history would be impossible to write, even if we were able to

identify or compare the history of science with chat of philosophy.

But it is doubly impossible both because there are comprised under

the name of 'science' such diverse forms as sciences of observation

and mathematical sciences, and also because in each of these classes

themselves the several disciplines remain separate, owing to the

irreducible variety of data and postulates from which they spring.

If, as we have pointed out, every particular philosophical problem

links and places itself in harmony with all other philosophical

problems, every scientific problem tends, on the contrary, to shut

itself up in itself, and there is no more destructive tendency in

science than that of 'explaining' all the facts by means of a 'single

principle,' substituting, that is to say, an unfruitful metaphysic

for fruitful science, allowing an empty word to act as a magic wand,

and by 'explaining everything' to 'explain' nothing at all. The unity

admitted by the history of the sciences is not that which connects

one theory with another and one science with another in an imaginary

general history of science, but that which connects each science and

each theory with the intellectual and social complex of the moment in

which it appeared. But even here too we must utter the warning that in

thus explaining their true nature we do not wish to contest the right

to existence of tables and encyclopædias of the history of science,

far less to throw discredit upon the present direction of studies, by

means of which, at the call of the history of the sciences, useful

Research is stimulated in directions that have been long neglected.

Nor do we intend to move any objection to histories of science in the

form of tables and encyclopædias on the ground that it is impossible

for the same student to be equally competent as to problems of quite

different nature, such as are those of the various sciences; for it

is inconceivable that a philosopher exists with a capacity equal to

the understanding of each and every philosophical problem (indeed, the

mind of the best solver of certain problems is usually the more closed

to others); or that a critic and historian of poetry and art exists

who tastes and enjoys equally all forms of poetry and art, however

versatile he be. Each one has his sphere marked out more or less

narrowly, and each is universal only by means of his particularity.

Finally, we shall not repeat the same demonstration for political

history and ethics, where the claim to represent the whole of history

in a single line of development has had less occasion to manifest

itself. It is usually more readily admitted there that every history

is particular--that is to say, determined by the political and ethical

problem or problems with which history is concerned in time and place,

and which every history therefore occasionally rethinks from the

beginning. The _analogy,_ then, between different kinds of special

history is to be considered perfect, and the anomaly between them

excluded, for they all obey the principle of particularity, that is,

particular universality (whatever be the appearance to the contrary).

But if, as histories, they all proceed according to the nature of what

we have explained as historiography, in so far as they are _special_

each one conforms to the concept of its speciality. It is in this sense

alone that each one is anomalous in respect to the others, preserving,

that is to say, its own peculiar nature. We have explained that the

claim to treat the history of poetry and of art in the same way as

philosophy is erroneous, not only because it misconceives the true

concept of history, but also because it misrepresents the nature of

art, conceiving it as philosophy and dissipating it in a dialectic

of concepts, or because it leaves out, in the history of art, just

that by reason of which art is art, looking upon it as something

secondary, or at best giving it a place beside the social or conceptual

activities. This error is precisely analogous to that of those who

from time to time suggest what they term the 'psychological' reform of

philosophy--that is to say, they would like to treat it as dependent

upon the psychology of philosophers and of the social environment, thus

placing it on a level, sometimes with the history of the sentiments,

at others with that of fancies and Utopias, or with what is not

the history of philosophizing. Such persons lack the knowledge of

what _philosophy_ is, as the others lack the knowledge of _poetry_

and _art_. Anyone desirous of arriving at a rapid knowledge of the

difference between the history of philosophy and the history of poetry

should observe how the one, owing to the nature of its object, is led

to examine theories in so far as they are the _work of pure mind,_

and therefore to develop a history in which thoughts represent the

_dramatis personæ,_ while the other is led by the nature of its object

to examine works of art in so far as they are works of imagination,

which gives expression to movements of feeling, and therefore to

develop a history of imaginative and sensitive points of view. The

former, therefore, though it does not neglect actions, events, and

imagination, regards them as the _humus_ of pure thought and takes

the form of a history of concepts _without persons,_ either real or

imaginary, while the latter, which also does not neglect actions,

events, and thoughts in its turn regards them as the humus of imaginary

creations and takes the form of a history of ideal or imaginary

_personalities,_ which have divested themselves of the ballast of

practical interests and of the curb of concepts. The plans, too, which

they draw up and with which they cannot dispense, any more than can any

human dialectic, answer to these different tendencies--that is to say,

with the one they are schemes or general types of modes of thinking,

with the other schemes containing ideal personalities.

If the history of philosophy has several times tried to devour the

history of poetry and art, it may also be said to have several times

tried to devour the _history of practice,_ that of politics and ethics,

or 'social history,' as people prefer to call it in our day. It has

also been asserted that such history should be set free from the

chroniclism in which it had become involved and assume a scientific and

rigorous form. To do this, it was heedful to reduce it to a history

of 'ideas,' which are the true and essential practical acts, because

they generate them--that is to say, the error which we noted above in

respect to poetry and art has here been repeated. What is peculiar to

practical acts has been neglected, and only the 'ideas,' which are

their antecedents and consequents, have been retained. But on other

occasions the 'ideas' to which it was claimed to reduce practical

acts were not really ideas or intellectual formations, but truly

practical acts, sentiments, dispositions, customs, institutions. The

originality of political and ethical history was thus unconsciously

confirmed. Its object is just what can be designated with the single

word _institutions,_ taking the word in its widest signification--that

is to say, understanding by it all practical arrangements of human

individuals and societies, from the most recondite sentiments to the

most obvious modes of life (which, too, are always will in action).

All are equally historical productions, the sole effective historical

productions perceivable according to the practical form of the

spirit. If the patrimony of judgments, as the capital with and upon

which our modern thought works, is the result of a long history, of

which we become conscious from time to time, illustrating now one

and now another of its particular aspects at the solicitation of new

needs, so also what we can now practically _do_, all our sentiments

as so-called civilized men--courage, honour, dignity, love, modesty,

and the like--all our institutions in the strict sense of the term

(which are themselves due to attitudes of the spirit, utilitarian or

moral)--the family, the state, commerce, industry, military affairs,

and so on--have a long history; and according as one or other of those

sentiments or institutions enters upon a crisis, as the result of new

wants, we attempt to ascertain its true 'nature'--that is to say, its

historical genesis. Anyone who has followed the developments of modern

social historiography with care and attention has been able to see

clearly that its aim is precisely to arrange the _chroniclistic chaos_

of disaggregated notes of events in _ordered series of histories of

social values,_ and that its field of research is the history of the

human soul in its practical aspect; either when it produces general

histories of _civilization_ (always due to particular motives and

limited by them), or when it presents histories _of classes, peoples,

social currents, sentiments, institutions,_ and so forth.

_Biography,_ too (only when not limited to a mere chroniclistic

collection of the experiences of an individual or to a poetical

portrait, improperly regarded as a historical work), is the history of

an 'institution' in the philosophical acceptation of the word and forms

part of the history of practice: because the individual, in the same

way as a people or a social class, is the formation of a character, or

complex of specific attitudes and actions consequent upon them; and it

is of this that historical biography consists, not of the individual

looked upon as external or private or physical, or whatever it be

called.

We might be expected to indicate the place or function of the _history

of science_ and of _religion,_ in order to render to a certain extent

complete this rapid review of special histories, in which general

history realizes itself in turn--it never exists outside of them. But

if science differs from philosophy in being partly theoretical and

partly practical, and religion is an attempt to explain reality by

means of myth and to direct the work of man according to an ideal, it

is evident that the history of science enters to some extent into the

history of philosophical thought and to some extent forms part of that

of needs and institutions; indeed, since the moment which sets science

to work and endows it with its peculiar character is the practical or

suitable moment, it really belongs to the history of institutions in

the very wide sense described; and the history of religion forms to

some extent part of the history of institutions and to some extent

part of the history of philosophy; indeed, since the dominating moment

is here mythical conception or philosophical effort, the history of

religion is substantially that of philosophy. Other more particular

disquisitions in connexion with this argument would be out of place

in the present treatise, which is not especially concerned with the

theory and methodology of particular special histories (coincident with

the treatment of the various spheres of philosophy, æsthetics, logic,

etc.), and aims only at indicating the directions in which they must

necessarily develop.[5]

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

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

[3] In the _Æsthetic,_ I, ch. xvii.

[4] See Appendix III.

[5] It will be of further use to draw attention here, in a note, to

the already mentioned distinction between the history of practice in

politics and in ethics, because thus alone can be set at rest the

variance which runs through historiography, between political history

or history of states and history of humanity or of civilization,

especially from the eighteenth century onward. In Germany it is

one of the elements in the intricate debate between _Geschichte_

and _Kulturgeschichte,_ and it has sometimes been described as a

conflict between French historiography (Voltaire and his followers),

or _histoire de la civilisation,_ and the Germanic (Möser and his

followers), or history of the state. One side would absorb and

subject the history of culture or social history to that of the

state, the other would do the opposite; and the eclectics, as usual,

without knowing much about it, place the one beside the other, inert,

history of politics and history of civilization, thus destroying the

unity of history. The truth is that political history and history

of civilization have the same relations between one another in the

practical field as those between the history of poetry or of art and

the history of philosophy or thought in the theoretical field. They

correspond to two eternal moments of the spirit--that of the pure will,

or economic moment, and that of the ethical will. Hence we also see why

some will always be attracted rather by the one than the other form of

history: according as to whether they are moved chiefly by political or

chiefly by moral interests.

APPENDIX III

PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY

Having established the unity of philosophy and historiography, and

shown that the division between the two has but a literary and didactic

value, because it is founded upon the possibility of placing in the

foreground of verbal exposition now one and now the other of the two

dialectical elements of that unity, it is well to make quite clear what

is the true object of the treatises bearing the traditional title of

philosophic 'theory' or 'system': to what (in a word) _philosophy can

be reduced._

Philosophy, in consequence of the new relation in which it has been

placed, cannot of necessity be anything but the _methodological moment

of historiography_: a dilucidation of the categories constitutive

of historical judgments, or of the concepts that direct historical

interpretation. And since historiography has for content the concrete

life of the spirit, and this life is life of imagination and of

thought, of action and of morality (or of something else, if anything

else can be thought of), and in this variety of its forms remains

always one, the dilucidation moves in distinguishing between æsthetic

and logic, between economic and ethic, uniting and dissolving them

all in the philosophy of the spirit. If a philosophical problem shows

itself to be altogether sterile for the historical judgment, we have

there the proof that such problem is otiose, badly stated, and in

reality does not exist. If the solution of a problem--that is to

say, of a philosophical proposition--instead of making history more

intelligible, leaves it obscure or confounds it with others, or leaps

over it and lightly condemns or negates it, we have there the proof

that such proposition and the philosophy with which it is connected

are arbitrary, though it may preserve interest in other respects, as a

manifestation of sentiment or of imagination.

The definition of philosophy as 'methodology' is not at first exempt

from doubts, even on the part of one ready to accept in general the

tendency that it represents; because philosophy and methodology are

terms often contrasted, and a philosophy that leads to a methodology

is apt to be tainted with empiricism. But certainly the methodology

of which we are here speaking is not at all empirical; indeed, it

appears just for the purpose of correcting and taking the place of the

empirical methodology of professional historians and of other such

specialists in all that greater part of it where it is a true and

proper, though defective, attempt toward the philosophical solution

of the theoretical problems raised by the study of history, or toward

philosophical methodology and philosophy as methodology.

If, however, the above-mentioned dispute is settled as soon as stated,

this cannot be said of another, where our position finds itself opposed

to a widely diffused and ancient conception of philosophy as the

solver of the mystery of the universe, knowledge of ultimate reality,

revelation of the world of noumena, which is held to be beyond the

world of phenomena, in which we move in ordinary life and in which

history also moves. This is not the place to give the history of that

idea; but we must at least say this, that its origin is religious or

mythological, and that it persisted even among those philosophers

who were most successful in directing thought toward our earth as the

sole reality, and initiated the new philosophy as methodology of the

judgment or of historical knowledge. It persisted in Kant, who admitted

it as the limit of his criticism; it persisted in Hegel, who framed his

subtle researches in logic and philosophy of the spirit in a sort of

mythology of the Idea.

Nevertheless, the diversity of the two conceptions manifested itself

in an ever-increasing ratio, finding expression in various formulas

of the nineteenth century, such as _psychology against metaphysic,_

a philosophy of _experience and immanence, aprioristic_ against

_transcendental_ philosophy, _positivism_ against _idealism_; and

although the polemic was as a rule ill conducted, going beyond the

mark and ending by unconsciously embracing that very metaphysic,

transcendency, and apriority, that very abstract idealism, which it

had set out to combat, the sentiment that inspired it was legitimate.

And the philosophy of methodology has made it its own, has combated

the same adversary with better arms, has certainly insisted upon a

psychological view, but a speculative psychological view, immanent

in history, but dialectically immanent, differing in this from

positivism, that while the latter made necessary the contingent, it

made the contingent necessary, thus affirming the right of thought to

the hegemony. Such a philosophy is just philosophy as history (and so

history as philosophy), and the determination of the philosophical

moment in the purely categorical and methodological moment.

The greater vigour of this conception in respect to the opposite,

the superiority of philosophy as _methodology_ over philosophy as

_metaphysic,_ is shown by the capacity of the former to solve the

problems of the latter by criticizing them and pointing out their

origin. Metaphysic, on the other hand, is incapable of solving not only

the problems of methodology, but even its own problems, without having

recourse to the fantastic and arbitrary. Thus questions as to the

reality of the external world, of soul-substance, of the unknowable,

of dualisms and of antitheses, and so forth, have disappeared in

gnoseological doctrines, which have substituted better conceptions for

those which we formerly possessed concerning the logic of the sciences,

explaining those questions as eternally renascent aspects of the

dialectic or phenomenology of knowledge.

The view of philosophy as metaphysic is, however, so inveterate and so

tenacious that it is not surprising that it should still give some sign

of life in the minds of those who have set themselves free of it in

general, but have not applied themselves to eradicating it in all its

particulars, nor closed all the doors by which it may return in a more

or less unexpected manner. And if we rarely find it openly and directly

displayed now, we may yet discern or suspect it in one or other of its

aspects or attitudes, persisting like kinks of the mind, or unconscious

preconceptions, which threaten to drive philosophy as methodology back

into the wrong path, and to prepare the return, though but for a brief

period, of the metaphysic that has been superseded.

It seems to me opportune to provide here a clear statement of some of

these preconceptions, tendencies, and habits, pointing out the errors

which they contain and entail.

First of all the survivals of the past that are still common comes the

view of philosophy as having a fundamental problem to solve. Now the

conception of a fundamental problem is intrinsically at variance with

that of philosophy as history, and with the treatment of philosophy

as methodology of history, which posits, and cannot do otherwise

than posit, the _infinity_ of philosophical problems, all certainly

connected with one another, but not one of which can be considered

fundamental, for just the same reason that no single part of an

organism is the foundation of all the others, but each one is in its

turn foundation and founded. If, indeed, methodology take the substance

of its problems from history, history in its most modest but concrete

form of history of ourselves, of each one of us as an individual, this

shows us that we pass on from one to another particular philosophical

problem at the promptings of our life as it is lived, and that one or

the other group or class of problems holds the field or has especial

interest for us, according to the epochs of our life. And we find the

same to be the case if we look at the wider but less definite spectacle

afforded by the already mentioned general history of philosophy--that

is to say, that according to times and peoples, philosophical problems

relating sometimes to morality, sometimes to politics, to religion,

or to the natural sciences and mathematics, have in turn the upper

hand. Every particular philosophical problem has been a problem of the

whole of philosophy, either openly or by inference, but we never meet

with a _general problem of philosophy,_ owing to the contradiction

thereby implied. And if there does seem to be one (and it certainly

does seem so), it is really a question of appearances, due to the

fact that modern philosophy, which comes to us from the Middle Ages

and was elaborated during the religious struggles of the Renaissance,

has preserved a strong imprint of _theology_ in its didactic form,

not less than in the psychological disposition of the greater part of

those addicted to it. Hence arises the fundamental and almost unique

importance usurped by the problem of thought and being, which after

all was nothing more than the old problem of this world and the next,

of earth and heaven, in a critical and gnoseological form. But those

who destroyed or who initiated the destruction of heaven and of the

other world and of transcendental philosophy by immanent philosophy

began at the same moment to corrode the conception of a fundamental

problem, although they were not fully aware of this (for we have said

above that they remained trammelled in the philosophy of the Thing

in Itself or in the Mythology of the Idea). That problem was rightly

fundamental for religious spirits, who held that the whole intellectual

and practical dominion of the world was nothing, unless they had saved

their own souls or their own thought in another world, in the knowledge

of a world of noumena and reality. But such it was not destined to

remain for the philosophers, henceforth restricted to the world alone

or to nature, which has no skin and no kernel and is all of a piece.

What would happen were we to resume belief in a fundamental problem,

dominating all others? The other problems would either have to be

considered as all dependent upon it and therefore solved with it, or

as problems no longer philosophical but empirical. That is to say, all

the problems appearing every day anew in science and life would lose

their value, either becoming a tautology of the fundamental solution or

being committed to empirical treatment. Thus the distinction between

philosophy and methodology, between metaphysic and philosophy of the

spirit, would reappear, the first transcendental as regards the second,

the second aphilosophical as regards the first.

Another view, arising from the old metaphysical conception of the

function of philosophy, leads to the rejection of distinction in favour

of _unity,_ thus conforming to the theological conception that all

distinctions are unified by absorption in God, and to the religious

point of view, which forgets the world and its necessities in the

vision of God. From this ensues a disposition which may be described

as something between indifferent, accommodating, or weak, in respect

of particular problems, and the pernicious doctrine of the double

faculty is almost tacitly renewed, that is, of intellectual intuition

or other superior cognoscitive faculty, peculiar to the philosopher

and leading to the vision of true reality, and of criticism or thought

prone to interest itself in the contingent and thus greatly inferior

in degree and free to proceed with a lack of speculative rigour not

permissible in the other. Such a disposition led to the worst possible

consequences in the philosophical treatises of the Hegelian school,

where the disciples (differing from the master) generally gave evidence

of having meditated but little or not at all upon the problems of the

various spiritual forms, freely accepting vulgar opinions concerning

them, or engaging in them with the indifference of men sure of the

essential, and therefore cutting and mutilating them without pity, in

order to force them into their pre-established schemes with all haste,

thus getting rid of difficulties by means of this illusory arrangement.

Hence the emptiness and tiresomeness of their philosophies, from

which the historian, or the man whose attention is directed to the

understanding of the particular and the concrete, failed to learn

anything that could be of use to him in the direction of his own

studies and in the clearer formulation of his own judgments. And since

the mythology of the idea reappeared in positivism as mythology of

evolution, here too particular problems (which are indeed the only

philosophical problems) received merely schematic and empty treatment

and did not progress at all. Philosophy as history and methodology of

history restores honour to the virtue of acuteness or discernment,

which the theological unitarianism of metaphysic tended to depreciate:

discernment, which is prosaic but severe, hard and laborious but

prolific, which sometimes assumes the unsympathetic aspect of

scholasticism and pedantry, but is also of use in this aspect, like

every discipline, and holds that the neglect of distinction for unity

is also intimately opposed to the conception of philosophy as history.

A third tendency (I beg to be allowed to proceed by enumeration of the

various sides of the same mental attitude for reasons of convenience),

a third tendency also seeks the _definitive_ philosophy, untaught by

the historical fact that no philosophy has ever been definitive or has

set a limit to thought, or has ever been thoroughly convinced that

the perpetual changing of philosophy with the world which perpetually

changes is not by any means a defect, but is the nature itself of

thought and reality. Or, rather, such teaching, and the proposition

that follows it, do not fail altogether of acceptance, and they are

led to believe that the spirit, ever growing upon itself, produces

thoughts and systems that are ever new. But since they have retained

the presupposition of a fundamental problem which (as we have said)

substantially consists of the ancient problem of religion alone,

and each problem well determined implies a single solution, the

solution given of the 'fundamental problem' naturally claims to be

the definitive solution of the problem of philosophy itself. A new

solution could not appear without a new problem (owing to the logical

unity of problem and solution); but that problem, which is superior

to all the others, is on the contrary the only one. Thus a definitive

philosophy, assumed in the conception of the fundamental problem, is at

variance with historical experience, and more irreconcilably, because

in a more evidently logical manner, with philosophy as history, which,

admitting infinite problems, denies the claim for and the expectation

of a definitive philosophy. Every philosophy is definitive for the

problem which it solves, but not for the one that appears immediately

afterward, at the foot of the first, nor for the other problems which

will arise from the solution of this. To close the series would be to

turn from philosophy to religion and to rest in God.

Indeed, the fourth preconception, which we now proceed to state, and

which links itself with the preceding, and, together with all the

preceding, to the theological nature of the old metaphysic, concerns

the _figure of the philosopher,_ as Buddha or the Awakened One, who

posits himself as superior to others (and to himself in the moments

when he is not a philosopher), because he holds himself to be free from

human passions, illusions, and agitations by means of philosophy. This

is the case with the believer, who fixes his mind upon God and shakes

off earthly cares, like the lover, who feels himself blessed in the

possession of the beloved and defies the whole world. But the world

soon takes its revenge both upon the believer and the lover, and does

not fail to insist upon its rights. Such an illusion is impossible for

the philosophical historian, who differs from the other in feeling

himself irresistibly involved in the course of history, as at once both

subject and object, and who is therefore led to negate felicity or

beatitude, as he negates every other abstraction (because, as has been

well said, _le bonheur est le contraire de la sensation de vivre_), and

to accept life as it is, as joy that overcomes sorrow and perpetually

produces new sorrows and new unstable joys. And history, which he

thinks as the only truth, is the work of tireless thought, which

conditions practical work, as practical work conditions the new work of

thought. Thus the primacy formerly attributed to the contemplative life

is now transferred not to active life, but to life in its integrity,

which is at once thought and action. And every man is a philosopher

(in his circle, however wide or narrow it may appear), and every

philosopher is a man, indissolubly linked to the conditions of human

life, which it is not given to anyone to transcend. The mystical or

apocalyptic philosopher of the Græco-Roman decadence was well able to

separate himself from the world: the great thinkers, like Hegel, who

inaugurated the epoch of modern philosophy, although they denied the

primacy of the abstract contemplative life, were liable to fall back

into the error of belief in this supremacy and to conceive a sphere of

absolute spirit, a process of liberation through art, religion, and

philosophy, as a means of reaching it; but the once sublime figure of

the philosopher blessed in the absolute, when we try to revive it in

this modern world of ours, becomes tinged with the comic. It is true

that satire has now but little material upon which to exercise itself,

and is reduced to aiming its shafts at the 'professors of philosophy'

(according to the type of philosopher that has been created by modern

universities, which is partly the heir of the 'master of theology'

of the Middle Ages): against the professors, that is to say, to the

extent that they continue to repeat mechanically abstract general

propositions, and seem to be unmoved by the passions and the problems

that press upon them from all sides and vainly ask for more concrete

and actual treatment. But the function and the social figure of the

philosopher have profoundly changed, and we have not said that the

manner of being of the 'professors of philosophy' will not also change

in its turn--that is to say, that the way of teaching philosophy in

the universities and schools is not on the verge of experiencing a

crisis, which will eliminate the last remains of the medieval fashion

of formalistic philosophizing. A strong advance in philosophical

culture should lead to this result: that all students of human affairs,

jurists, economists, moralists, men of letters--in other words, all

students of historical matters--should become conscious and disciplined

philosophers, and that thus the philosopher in general, the _purus

philosophus,_ should find no place left for him among the professional

specifications of knowledge. With the disappearance of the philosopher

'in general' would also disappear the last social vestige of the

teleologist or metaphysician, and of the Buddha or Awakened One.

There is also a prejudice which to some extent inquinates the manner

of _culture_ of students of philosophy. They are accustomed to have

recourse almost exclusively to the books of philosophers, indeed of

philosophers 'in general,' of the metaphysical system-makers, in the

same way as the student of theology formed himself upon the sacred

texts. This method of culture, which is perfectly consequent when

a start is made from the presupposition of a fundamental or single

problem, of which it is necessary to know the different diverging

and progressive solutions which have been attempted, is altogether

inconsequent and inadequate in the case of a historical and immanent

philosophy, which draws its material from all the most varied

impressions of life and from all intuitions and reflections upon life.

That form of culture is the reason for the aridity of the treatment of

certain particular problems, for which is necessary a continued contact

with daily experience (art and art criticism for æsthetic, politics,

economy, judicial trials for the philosophy of rights, positive and

mathematical sciences for the gnoseology of the sciences, and so on).

To it is also due the aridity of treatment of those parts of philosophy

themselves which are traditionally considered to constitute 'general

philosophy,' for they too had their origin in life, and we must refer

them back to life if we are to give a satisfactory interpretation of

their propositions; we must plunge them into life again to develop

them and to find in them new aspects. The _whole of history_ is the

foundation of philosophy as history, and to limit its foundation to

the _history of philosophy_ alone, and of 'general' or 'metaphysical'

philosophy, is impossible, save by unconsciously adhering to the old

idea of philosophy, not as methodology but as metaphysic, which is the

fifth of the prejudices that we are enumerating.

This enumeration can be both lengthened and ended with the mention of a

sixth preconception, relating to _philosophical exposition._ Owing to

this, philosophy is expected to have either an architectural form, as

though it were a temple consecrated to the Eternal, or a warm poetical

form, as though it were a hymn to the Eternal. But these forms were

part of the old content, and that form is now changed. Philosophy

shows itself to be a dilucidation of the categories of historical

interpretation rather than the grandiose architecture of a temple or a

sacred hymn running on conventional lines. Philosophy is discussion,

polemic, rigorous didactic exposition, which is certainly coloured

with the sentiments of the writer, like every other literary form,

able also at times to raise its voice (or on the other hand to become

slight and playful, according to circumstances), but not constrained to

observe rules which appear to be proper to a theological or religious

content. Philosophy treated as methodology has, so to speak, caused

philosophical exposition to descend from poetry to prose.

All the preconceptions, habits, and tendencies which I have briefly

described should in my opinion be carefully sought out and eliminated,

for it is they that impede philosophy from taking the form and

proceeding in the mode suitable and adequate to the consciousness of

the unity with history which it has reached. If we look merely at

the enormous amount of psychological observations and moral doubts

accumulated in the course of the nineteenth century by poetry, fiction,

and drama, those voices of our society, and consider that in great part

it remains without critical treatment, some idea can be formed of the

immense amount of work that falls to philosophy to accomplish. And if

on the other hand we observe the multitude of anxious questions that

the great European War has everywhere raised--as to the state, as to

history, as to rights, as to the functions of the different peoples, as

to civilization, culture, and barbarism, as to science, art, religion,

as to the end and ideal of life, and so on--we realize the duty of

philosophers to issue forth from the theologico-metaphysical circle in

which they remain confined even when they refuse to hear of theology

and metaphysic. For notwithstanding their protests, and notwithstanding

the new conception accepted and professed by them, they really remain

intellectually and spiritually attached to the old ideas.

Even the _history itself of philosophy_ has hitherto been renewed only

to a small extent, in conformity with the new conception of philosophy.

This new conception invites us to direct our attention to thoughts

and thinkers, long neglected or placed in the second rank and not

considered to be truly philosophers because they did not treat directly

the 'fundamental problem' of philosophy or the great _peut-être,_ but

were occupied with 'particular problems.' These particular problems,

how-ever, were destined to produce eventually a change of view as

regards the 'general problem,' which emerged itself reduced to the

rank of a 'particular' problem. It is simply the result of prejudice

to look upon a Machiavelli, who posited the conception of the modern

state, a Baltasar Gracian, who examined the question of acuteness in

practical matters, a Pascal, who criticized the spirit of Jesuitry, a

Vico, who renewed all the sciences of the spirit, or a Hamann, with

his keen sense of the value of tradition, as minor philosophers, I do

not say in comparison with some metaphysician of little originality,

but even when compared with a Descartes or a Spinoza, who dealt with

_other_ but not _superior_ problems. A schematic and bloodless history

of philosophy corresponded, in fact, with the philosophy of the

'fundamental problem.' A far richer, more varied and pliant philosophy

should correspond with philosophy as methodology, which holds to be

philosophy not only what appertains to the problems of immanency, of

transcendency, of this world and the next, but everything that has

been of avail in increasing the patrimony of guiding conceptions, the

understanding of actual history, and the formation of the reality of

thought in which we live.