PART II

CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

I

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

We possess many works relating to the history of historiography, both

special, dealing with individual authors, and more or less general,

dealing with groups of authors (histories of historiography confined

to one people and to a definite period, or altogether 'universal'

histories). Not only have we bibliographical works and works of

erudition, but criticism, some of it excellent, especially in the case

of German scientific literature, ever the most vigilant of all in not

leaving unexplored any nook or cranny of the dominion of knowledge.

It cannot, therefore, form part of my design to treat the theme from

its foundations: but I propose to make a sort of appendix or critical

annotation to the collection of books and essays that I have read upon

the argument. I will not say that these are all, or even that they are

all those of any importance, but they ire certainly a considerable

number. By means of this annotation I shall try to establish, on the

one hand, in an exact manner and in conformity with the principles

explained, the method of such a history, regarding which I observe

that there still exist confusion and perplexity, even among the best,

which lead to errors of judgment or at least of plan, and on the

other hand I shall try to outline the principal periods in a summary

manner, both with the view of exemplifying the method established,

and, as it were, of illustrating historically the concepts exposed in

the preceding theoretical pages, which might otherwise retain here and

there something of an abstract appearance.

Beginning with methodical delimitations, I shall note in the first

place that in a history of historiography as such, historical writings

cannot be looked upon from the point of view proper to a _history of

literature_--that is to say, as expressions of individual sentiments,

as forms of art. Doubtless they are this also, and have a perfect right

to form part of histories of literature, as the treatises and systems

of the philosophers, the writings of Plato and Aristotle, of Bruno,

of Leibnitz, and of Hegel; but in this case both are regarded not as

works of history and of philosophy, but of literature and poetry; and

the empirical scale of values which constitute the different modes

of history in the cases of the same authors is different, because

in a history of literature the place of a Plato will always be more

considerable than that of an Aristotle, that of a Bruno than that of

a Leibnitz, owing to the greater amount of passion and the greater

richness of artistic problems contained in the former of each pair.

The fact that in many volumes of literary history such diversity of

treatment is not observed, and historians are talked of historically

and not in a literary manner and philosophers philosophically rather

than in a literary manner, is due to the substitution in such

works of incoherent compilation for work that is properly critical

and scientific. But the distinction between the two aspects is

important for this reason also, that erroneous judgments, praise, and

censure, alike unjustified, are apt to appear, owing to the careless

transference of the scale of values from one history to another. The

slight esteem in which Polybius was held in antiquity and for some

time after, because 'he did not write well' in comparison with the

splendour of Livy or with the emotional intensity of Tacitus, is an

instance of this, as is likewise in Italy the excessive praise lavished

upon certain historians who were little more than correct and elegant

writers of prose in comparison with others who were negligent and crude

in their form, but serious students. Ulrici,[1] in his youthful book

on ancient historiography, which despite its heaviness and verbosity

of exposition has great merits, after having discussed the 'scientific

value' of that historiography, also speaks at great length of 'artistic

value'; but setting aside what of arbitrary is to be found in some of

the laws that he applies to historiography as art, in conformity with

the æsthetic ideas of his time, it is evident that the second subject

of which he treats does not coalesce with the first and is only placed

side by side with it in the same way as those sections of works dealing

with historical method are not connected but simply juxtaposed, and

after having studied in their own way the formation of historical

thought, the collection of materials or 'heuristic,' up to final

'comprehension,' begin to discuss the form of the 'exposition,' and in

so doing continue without being aware of it the method of rhetorical

treatises on the art of history composed during the Renaissance. These

have their chief exponent in Vossius (1623). We cannot abstain from

sometimes mentioning the literary form of the works of historians,

nor from according their laurels to works of remarkable literary

value, while noting their unsatisfactory historiographical methods;

but to touch here and there upon, to discuss, to characterize, to

eliminate, is of secondary importance and does not form part of the

proper function of historiography, whose object is the _development of

historiographical thought._

The distinction between this history and that of _philology_ or

_erudition_ is less apparent but not less indubitable, always, be it

well understood, in the sense explained, of a distinction that is not

a separation. This warning should be understood in respect of other

exclusions that we are about to effect, without our being obliged

to repeat it at every step; for the connexion between history and

philology is undeniable, not less than that between history and art,

or history and practical life. But that does not prevent philology

in itself being the collection, the rearrangement, the purification

of material, and not history. Owing to this quality it forms a part

rather of the history of culture than of that of thought. It would be

impossible to disassociate it from the history of libraries, archives,

museums, universities, seminaries, _écoles des chartes,_ academical

and editorial enterprises, and from other institutions and proceedings

of an entirely practical nature. Fueter has therefore been right in

excluding from his theme in his recent work on the history of modern

historiography[2] "the history of merely philological research and

criticism." This has not prevented him from taking store where apposite

of the school of Biondo or of that of Maurini, or of the perfecting of

the method of seeking for the sources attained by the German school

in the nineteenth century. The confusion and lack of development

observable in the old and solid work of Wachler[3] is perhaps due to

his having failed to make this distinction, to which recourse can also

be had with advantage elsewhere. Wachler's work, entitled and conceived

as "history of research and of the historical art from the Renaissance

of letters in Europe onward," ended by assuming the appearance of a

repertory or bibliographical catalogue.

The obstacles to be encountered by the distinction between the history

of historiography and that of the _practical tendencies,_ or tendencies

of the _social and political spirit,_ are more intricate. These indeed

become incorporated with or at least leave their mark upon the works

of historians; but it is just because we can only with difficulty

perceive the line of demarcation that it is indispensable to make it

quite clear. Such tendencies, such social and political spirit, belong

rather to the matter than to the theoretical form of history; they are

not so much historiography as history in the act and in its _fieri._

Machiavelli is a historian in so far as he tries to understand the

course of events; he is a politician, or at least a publicist, when

he posits and desires a prince, founder of a strong national state,

as his ideal, reflecting this in his history. This history, in so

far as it portrays that ideal and the inspiration and teaching that

accompany it, here and there becomes fable (_fabula docet_). Thus

Machiavelli belongs partly to the history of thought in the Renaissance

and partly to the history of the practice of the Renaissance. Nor does

this happen solely in political and social historiography, but also

in literary and artistic, because there is not perhaps a critic in

the world, however unprejudiced and broad in his ideas, who does not

manifest tendencies in the direction of a literary renovation of his

epoch together with his actual judgments and reconstructions. Now to

the extent that he does this, even if it be in the same book and on

the same page or in the same period, he is no longer a critic, but

a practical reformer of art. In one domain of history alone is this

pacific accompaniment of interpretations and aspirations impossible--in

the history of philosophy, because when, as here, there is a difference

between historical interpretation and the tendency of the philosopher,

the difference reveals the insufficiency of the interpretation itself:

in other words, if the theory of the historian of philosophy is at war

with the theories of which he claims to expound the history, his theory

must be false, just because it does not avail to justify the history

of the theories. But this exception does not annul the distinction

in other fields; indeed, it confirms it, and is not an exception in

the empirical sense, as it appears to be: thought distinguishes and

is distinguished from sentiment and will, but it is not distinguished

from itself, precisely because it is the principle of distinction.

A methodological corollary of this distinction between history of

historiography and history of practical tendencies is that the

introduction into the first of considerations belonging to the second

is to be held erroneous. Here I think Fueter has sinned to some extent

in the book to which I have already referred, where he divides his

material into humanistic, political, party, imperial, particularist,

Protestant, Catholic, Jesuitic, illuministic, romanticist, erudite,

lirico-subjective, national, statolatral, historiographical, and the

like. Only some of the above divisions belong to, or can properly be

reduced to, historiographical concepts, while the majority refer to

social and political life. Hence the lack of sound organization that

we observe in this book, which is yet so lively and ingenious: its

divisions follow one another without sufficient logicality, continuity,

and necessity, and are not the result of a single thought which posits

them and develops itself through them. If, on the other hand, the

genuinely historiographical portions, which have become mingled with

it, should be eliminated, what remained could certainly be organized,

but as social and political history, no longer as historiography,

because the works of historians would be consulted only as documents

showing the tendencies of the times in which they were written.

Machiavelli, for instance, (to use the same example) would there figure

as an Italian patriot and defender of absolute power, while Vico (a

much greater historian than Machiavelli) would not be able to appear at

all, or hardly at all, because his relation with the political life of

his time was remote and general.

What I have been expounding may be resumed by saying that the history

of historiography is neither _literary_ history nor the history of

cultural, social, political, moral doings, which are of a _practical_

nature, but that it is certainly all these things, by reason of the

unbreakable unity of history, though with it the _accent_ does not fall

upon practical facts, but rather upon _historiographical thought,_

which is its proper subject.

Having pointed out or recalled these distinctions, which, as we have

seen, are sometimes neglected with evil results, we must now utter a

warning against other distinctions, employed without rational basis,

which rather overcloud and trouble the history of historiography than

shed light upon it.

Fueter (I cite him again, although the error is not peculiar to

him) declares that he has dealt in his book with _historiographical

theories_ and with _historical method_ only in so far as they seem

to have had influence upon actual historiography. The history of

historicity (here is the reason he gives for the method he has

followed) is as little the history of historiography as is the history

of dramatic theories the history of the drama. This he considers to

be proved by the fact that theory and practice often follow different

paths, as, for instance, in Lope de Vega, whose theory of the drama

and actual dramatic work were two different things, to such an extent

that it was said of the Spanish dramatist that although he reverenced

the poetical art, when he sat down to compose "he locked up the correct

rules under seven keys." This argument is without doubt specious, and I

was myself formerly seduced by it; but it is fallacious, as I realized

when I thought it over again, and I now affirm it to be an error with

all the conviction and authority of one who criticizes an error at one

time his own. The argument is founded upon a false analogy between the

production of art and that of history. Art, which is the work of the

imagination, can be well distinguished from the theory of art, which

is the work of reflection; artistic genius produces the former, the

speculative intellect the latter, and it often happens with artists

that the speculative intellect is inferior to their genius, so that

they do one thing and say another, or say one thing and do another,

without its being possible to accuse them of logical incoherence,

because the incoherence is between two discordant thoughts, never

between a thought and an act of the imagination. But history and theory

of history are both of them works of thought, bound to one another in

the same way as thought is bound to itself, since it is one. Thus no

historian but possesses in a more or less reflective way his theory of

history, because, not to put too fine a point upon it, every historian

implicitly or explicitly conducts a polemic against other historians

(against other 'versions' and 'judgments' of a fact), and how could

he ever conduct a polemic or criticize others if he did not himself

possess a conception of what history is and ought to be, to which to

refer, a theory of history? The artist, on the other hand, in so far

as he is an artist, does not polemize or criticize, but forms. It

may quite well happen that an erroneous theory of historiography is

expounded, while on the contrary the history as narrated may turn out

to be well constructed. This is, of course, to be incoherent, but is

so neither more nor less than when progress is effected in one branch

of historiography, while there is backwardness in another. There may

obtain, on the contrary, an excellent theory of history, where history

itself is bad; but in the same way that in one field of historiography

there is the sense of and striving for a better method, while there

is adherence to old methods in all the other fields. The history of

historiography is the history of historical thought; and here it is

impossible to distinguish theory of history from history.

Another exclusion which Fueter declares that he has made is that of

the _philosophy of history._ He does not give the reason for this, but

allows it to be understood, for he evidently holds that philosophies of

history do not possess a purely scientific character and are lacking

in truth. But not only are what are called 'philosophies of history'

erroneous conceptions of history, but so also are the naturalistic or

deterministic conceptions opposed to them, and all the various forms of

pseudo-history which have been described above, philological history,

poetical history, rhetorical history. I do not find that he has

excluded these from his history, any more than he has really excluded

the theological and transcendental conception of history (philosophy

of history); indeed, he constantly refers to it. Justice and logic

would insist upon all or none being excluded--all really excluded,

and not merely in words. But to exclude all of them, it may be said,

would be anything but intelligent, because how could the history of

history ever be told in such a void? What is this history but the

struggle of scientific historiography against inadequate scientific

formulas? Certainly the former is the protagonist, but how could a

drama be presented with a protagonist lacking antagonists? And even

if historical philology be not considered directly, but referred back

to philology, if poetical history be referred back to literature,

rhetorical or practical to social and political history, it would

nevertheless be necessary always to take account of the conversion that

often occurs of those various mental constructions into assertions

of reality, taken in exchange for and given the value of true and

proper histories. In this sense they become in turn _deterministic_

or _transcendental_ conceptions of history, and both of them logical

or illogical representations of all the others, and end by becoming

equivalent to one another dialectically, and are always before the

eyes of the historian, because the perpetual condition and the

perpetual sign of the progress of historical thought reside in their

movement, which passes from transcendency or false immanence to pure

immanence, to return to them and enter into a more profound conception

of immanency. To exclude philosophies of history from the history of

historiography does not, therefore, seem to me to be justifiable,

for the same reason as it seems to be unjustifiable to exclude from

it historiographical theories, which are the consciousness that

historiography acquires of itself: owing to their homogeneity, I say,

owing indeed to their identity with history, of which they do not form

accidental ingredients or material elements, but constitute the very

essence. A proof of this is to be found in the _Historical Philosophy

of France_ of Flint. He proceeds from a presumption that is perhaps the

opposite of that of Fueter--that is to say, he treats of the philosophy

of history, and not of history, but finds it impossible to maintain

the dykes between the two. His treatise, therefore, when artificial

obstacles have been overcome, runs like a single river and reveals

to our view the whole history of historical French thought, to which

Bossuet and Rollin, Condorcet and Voltaire, Auguste Comte and Michelet

or Tocqueville equally belong.

At this point it will probably be objected (although Fueter does not

propound this objection, it is probable that it is at the back of

his mind) that what is desired in a history of historiography is not

so much a history of _historical thought_ as a history of _history

in the concrete_: of the _Storie fiorentine_ of Machiavelli, of the

_Siècle de Louis XIV_ of Voltaire, or of the _Römische Geschichte_ of

Niebuhr: that would be a general history, while what is desired is a

specific history. But it is well to pay close attention to the meaning

of such a request and to the possibility of what is asked. If I set

out to write the history of the _Storie fiorentine_ of Machiavelli, in

respect to the particular material with which it deals, I shall rewrite

the history of Florence, criticizing and completing Machiavelli, and

shall thus be, for instance, a Villari, a Davidsohn, or a Salvemini.

If I set out to write the history of the material of Voltaire's work,

I shall criticize Voltaire and outline a new _Siècle de Louis XIV_,

as has been done, for example, by Philippson. And if I set to work to

examine and rethink the work of Niebuhr in respect to its particular

material, I shall be a new historian of Rome, a Mommsen or (to quote

the most recent writers) a Hector Pais or a Gaetano de Sanctis. But is

this what is desired? Certainly not. But if this be not desired, if the

particular materials of those histories are not to be taken account of,

what else remains save the 'way' in which they have been conceived, the

'mental form' by means of which they construct their narratives, and

therefore their theory and their historical 'thought'?

Now, if this truth be admitted (and I do not see how it can be

contested) it is not possible to reject an ulterior consequence which,

although it is wont to arouse in some the sensation of a paradox,

does not do so in us, for we find it altogether in accordance with

the conception of the identity of history with, philosophy that we

have defended. Is a thought that is not thought conceivable? Is it

permissible to distinguish between the _thought of the historian_ and

the _thought of the philosopher_? Are there perhaps two different

thoughts in the world? To persist in maintaining that the thought of

the historian thinks the fact and not the theory is prevented by the

preceding admission, if by nothing else: that the historian always

thinks at least both the theory of history and the historical fact. But

this admission entails his thinking the theory of all the things that

he narrates, together with the theory of history. And indeed he could

not narrate without understanding them. Fueter extols the merit of

Winckelmann, who was the first to conceive a history, not of artists,

but of art, of a pure spiritual activity, and that of Giannone, who

was the first to attempt a history of the life of jurisprudence. But

these writers made the progress they did because they had a new

and more accurate conception of art and of rights, and if they went

wrong as to certain points, that is because they did not always think

those conceptions with equal exactitude. Winckelmann, for instance,

materialized the spiritual activity of the artist when he posited an

abstract, fixed material ideal of beauty, and gave an abstract history

of artistic styles without regard to the temperaments, historical

circumstances, and individualities of the artists themselves. Giannone

failed to supersede the dualism of Church and State. Without indulging

in other too particular examples, it is evident at the first glance

that ancient historiography concords with the ancient conception of

religion of the state, of ethic, and of the whole of reality; the

medieval with Christian theology and ethic; that of the first half of

the nineteenth century with the idealistic and romantic philosophy,

that of the second half with naturalistic and positivistic philosophy.

Thus, _ex parte historicorum_, there is no way of distinguishing

historical and philosophical thought, which are perfectly commingled in

the narratives. But there is also no possibility of maintaining such

a distinction _ex parte philosophorum_ either, because, as all know,

or at least say, each period has the philosophy proper to it, which

is the consciousness of that period, and as such is its history, at

least in germ; or, as we have put it, philosophy and history coincide.

And if they coincide, the history of philosophy and the history of

historiography also coincide: the one is not only not distinguishable

from the other, but is not even subordinate to the other, for it is all

one with it.

The historiography of philosophy has already begun to open its arms,

inviting and receiving the works of the historians. Every day it

understands better that a history of Greek thought is not complete

without taking count of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius, nor of

Roman thought without Livy and Tacitus, nor of the thought of the

Renaissance without Machiavelli and Guicciardini. It must open them yet

wider and clasp to its bosom even the humble medieval historiographers

who noted the _Gesta episcoporum_ or _Historiolæ translationum_ or Vitæ

sanctorum, or who bear witness to the Christian faith, according to

their powers and in their own way, it is true, but not less than the

great Augustine according to his powers. It must receive not only the

hagiographical writers, but even obtuse philologists or sociologists

who have amused us during the last decades and bear witness to the

creed of positivism not other-wise than as Spencer or Haeckel in their

systems. By means of this amplification of concepts and enrichment of

material, the historiography of philosophy will place itself in the

position of being able to show that philosophy is a force diffused

throughout life, and not the particular invention and cult of certain

men who are philosophers, and will obtain the means that have hitherto

been lacking to effect a close conjunction with the whole historical

movement.

In its turn the history of historiography will gain by the fusion,

because it will find its own directive principles in philosophy, and by

its means will be rendered capable of understanding both the problems

of history in general and those of its various aspects as history of

art and of philosophy, of economic and moral life. To seek elsewhere

the criterion of explanation is vain. Fueter, who takes a glance at

the most recent historiography, that posterior to 1870, at the end of

his book, discerns in it the new consciousness that gives the highest

place to political and military power and marks the end of the old

liberalism, the strengthening of such consciousness by means of the

Darwinian theories concerning the struggle for life, the influence of

a more intense economical and industrial life and a greater intensity

of world politics, the repercussion of Egyptian and Orientalistic

discoveries, which have aided in disproving the illusion of Europe as

the centre of the world, the attraction exercised by the theory of

races, and so on. These observations are just, but they do not reach

the heart and brain of the most recent historiography; they merely

revolve round its body. The heart or brain is, as I have observed,

naturalism, the ideal of historical culture inspired and to be inspired

by the natural sciences. So true is this that Fueter himself burns a

few grains of incense before this idol, sighing for a form of history

that shall be beautiful with the beauty of a well-made machine,

rivalling a book on physics such as the _Theory of Tones_ of Helmholtz.

The truth is that the ideal of the natural sciences, instead of being

the perfection, is one of the many crises that historical thought has

passed through and will pass through. Historical thought is dialectic

of development, and not by any means a deterministic explanation by

means of causes which does not explain anything because it does not

develop anything. But whatever we may think of this, it is certain that

naturalism--that is, the criticism of naturalism--can alone supply the

clue for unravelling the web of the historiography of the last ten

years; the same events and historical movements enumerated above have

acted in the particular way in which they have acted owing to being

constantly framed in naturalistic thought.

For the rest, nothing forbids, and it may even serve a useful purpose,

that the history of philosophy and the history of historiography

should receive literary treatment in different books, for altogether

practical reasons, such, for instance, as the abundance of material and

the different training and acquirements needed for the treatment of the

different classes of material. But what is _apparently disunited_ by

practice thought _really_ unifies; and this real unification is what

I have wished to inculcate, without the pedantic idea ever passing

through my mind of dictating rules for composing books, as to which

it is desirable to leave all liberty of inclusion and exclusion to

writers, in conformity with their various intentions.

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

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

Oldenburg, 1911).

[3] _Geschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst seit der

Wiederherstellung der literarischen Cultur in Europa_ (Göttingen,

1812-20).

II

GRÆCO-ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

After what we have said as to the nature of periodization,[1] the

usual custom, to which I too bow here, of beginning the history of

historiography with that of the Greeks, and with the Greeks of the

fifth or sixth century before Christ, will be taken for what it is

really worth, but it must not be thought that we thus intend to

announce the beginning of historiography, its first appearance in the

world, when, on the contrary, all we wish to say is that our interest

in the investigation of its course becomes more vivid at that point.

History, like philosophy, has no historical beginning, but only an

ideal or metaphysical beginning, in so far as it is an activity of

thought, which is outside time. Historically speaking, it is quite

clear that prior to Herodotus, prior to the logographs, prior indeed

to Hesiod and to Homer, history was already, because it is impossible

to conceive of men who do not think and do not narrate their deeds in

some way or other. This explanation might seem to be superfluous if the

confusion between historical beginning and ideal beginning had not led

to the fancy of a 'first philosophical step,' made by Thales or Zeno,

or by somebody else, by means of which thinking the first stone is

supposed to have been laid, as it was believed that by thinking another

last step the pinnacle of the edifice of philosophy was or would be

attained. But Thales and Herodotus should really be called rather the

'sons' of our interest in the development of those disciplines than

the 'fathers' of philosophy and history, and it is we whom those sons

salute as their 'fathers.' We have not usually much interest in what

occurred prior to them or among people more distant than they from

our point of view, not only because there is a scarcity of surviving

documents concerning them, but above all because they are forms of

thought which have but little connexion with our own actual problems.

From its point of view, too, the distinction that we laid down between

history and philology suggests refraining from the search hitherto

made for the beginnings of Græco-Roman historiography by means of

composing lists of magistrates and of adding to these brief mention

of wars, treatises, embassies from colonies, religious festivities,

earthquakes, inundations, and the like, in the ῷροι and in the _annales

pontificum,_ in archives and museums made in temples, or indeed in the

chronological nails fixed to the walls, spoken of by Perizonius. Such

things are extrinsic to historiography and form the precedent, not of

it, but of chronicle and philology, which were not born for the first

time in the nineteenth or seventeenth century, or at any rate during

the Alexandrine period, but belong to all times, for in all times men

take note of what they remember and attempt to preserve such memorials

intact, to restore and to increase them. The precedent of history

cannot be something different from history, but is history itself, as

philosophy is the precedent of philosophy and the living of the living.

Nevertheless the thought of Herodotus and of the logographs really

does unite itself with religions, myths, theogonies, cosmogonies,

genealogies, and with legendary and epical tales, which were not

indeed poetry, or were not only poetry but also thoughts--that is to

say, metaphysics and histories. The whole of later historiography

developed from them by a dialectical process, for which they supplied

the presuppositions--that is to say, concepts, propositions of fact and

fancy mingled, and with that the stimulus better to seek out the truth

and to dissipate fancies. This dissipation took place more rapidly at

the time which it is usual to fix by convention as the beginning of

Greek historiography.

At that time thought deserts mythological history and its ruder

form, prodigious or miraculous history, and enters earthly or human

history--that is to say, the general conception that is still ours, so

much so that it has been possible for an illustrious living historian

to propose the works of Thucydides as an example and model to the

historians of our times. Certainly that exit and that entrance did

not represent for the Greeks a complete breaking with the past; and

since earthly history could not have been altogether wanting in the

past, so it is not to be believed that the Greeks from the sixth and

seventh centuries onward should have abandoned all faith in mythology

and prodigies. These things persisted not only with the people and

among lesser or vulgar historiographers, but also left their traces

among some of the greatest. Nevertheless, looking at the whole from

above, as one should look at it, it is evident that the environment

is altogether changed from what it was. Even the many fables that we

read in Herodotus, and which were to be read in the logographs, are

rarely (as has been justly observed) put forward ingenuously, but are

usually given as by one who collects what others believe, and does

not for that reason accept those beliefs, even if he does not openly

evince his disbelief; or he collects them because he does not know

what to substitute for them, and rather as matter for reflection

and inquiry: _quæ nec confirmare argumentis neque refellere in animo

est,_ as Tacitus says, when he recounts the fables of the Germans:

_plura transcribo quam credo,_ declared Quintus Curtius. Herodotus is

certainly not Voltaire, nor is he indeed Thucydides (Thucydides, 'the

atheist'); but certainly he is no longer Homer or Hesiod.

The following are a few examples of leading problems which ancient

historians had before them, dictated by the conditions and events

of Greek and Roman life; they were treated from a mental point of

view, which no longer found in those facts episodes of the rivalry of

Aphrodite and Hera (as formerly in the Trojan War), but varying complex

human struggles, due to human interests, expressing themselves in human

actions. How did the wars between the Greeks and the Persians originate

and develop? What were the origins of the Peloponnesian War? of the

expedition of Cyrus against Artaxerxes? How was the Roman power formed

in Latium, and how did it afterward extend in Italy and in the whole

world? How did the Romans succeed in depriving the Carthaginians of the

hegemony of the Mediterranean? What were the political institutions

developed in Athens, Rome, and Sparta, and what form did the social

struggle take in those cities? What did the Athenian _demos,_ the Roman

_plebs,_ the _eupatrides,_ and the _patres_ desire? What were the

virtues, the dispositions, the points of view, of the various peoples

which entered into conflict among themselves, Athenians, Lacedemonians,

Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Gauls, and Germans? What were the

characters of the great men who guided the destinies of the peoples,

Themistocles, Pericles, Alexander, Hannibal, and Scipio? These problems

were solved in a series of classical works by Thucydides, Xenophon,

Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, etc., and they will certainly not be blamed

for failing to exhaust their themes--that is, for failing to sound the

bottom of the universe, because there is no sounding the bottom of the

universe--nor because they solve those problems only in the terms in

which they had proposed them, neither more nor less than as we solve

the problems of our day in our own terms. Nor must we forget that since

modern historiography is still much as it was left by the Greeks, the

greater part of those events are still thought as they were by the

ancients, and although something has been added and a different light

illumines the whole, the work of the ancient historians is preserved in

our own: a true "eternal possession," as Thucydides intended that his

history should be.

And just as historical thought had become invigorated in its passage

from the mythological to the human stage, so did research and philology

grow. Herodotus was already travelling, asking questions, and listening

to answers, distinguishing between the things that he had seen

with his own eyes and those which depended upon hearsay, opinion,

and conjecture; Thucydides was submitting to criticism different

traditions relating to the same fact, and even inserting documents in

his narrative. Later appeared legions of learned men and critics, who

compiled 'antiquities' and 'libraries,' and busied themselves also with

the reading of texts, with chronology and geography, thus affording

great assistance to historical studies. Such a fervour of philological

studies was eventually attained that it was recognized as necessary to

draw a clear distinction between the 'histories of antiquaries' (of

which a considerable number survive either entire or in fragments)

and 'histories of historians,' and Polybius several times said that it

is easy to compose history from books, because it suffices to take up

one's residence in a city where there exist rich libraries, but that

true history requires acquaintance with political and military affairs

and direct knowledge of places and of people; and Lucian repeated

that it is indispensable for the historian to have political sense,

άδίδακτον φυσέως δῶρον, a gift of nature not to be learned (the maxims

and practices praised as quite novel by Möser and Niebuhr are therefore

by no means new). The fact is that a more profound theoretical

consciousness corresponded with a more vigorous historiography, so

inseparable is the theory of history from history, advancing with it.

It was also known that history should not be made a simple instrument

of practice, of political intrigue, or of amusement, and that its

function is above all to aim at truth: _ne quid falsi dicere audeat,

ne quid veri non audeat._ In consequence of this, partisanship, even

for one's own country, was condemned (although it was recognized

chat solicitude and sympathy were permissible); and _quidquid Græcia

mendax audet in historia_ was blamed. It was known that history is not

chronicle (annales), which is limited to external things, recording (in

the words of Asellio, the ancient Roman historian) _quod factum, quoque

anno gestum sit,_ whereas history tries to understand _quo Consilio,

quaque ratione gesta sint._ And it was also known that history cannot

set herself the same task as poetry. We find Thucydides referring with

disdain to histories written with the object of gaining the prize in

oratorical competitions, and to those which indulge in fables to please

the vulgar. Polybius too inveighed against those who seek to emphasize

moving details, and depict women dishevelled and in tears, and

dreadful scenes, as though composing tragedies and as though it were

their business to create the marvellous and pleasing and not impart

truth and instruction. If it be a fact that rhetorical historiography

(a worsening of the imaginative and poetic) abounded in antiquity and

introduced its false gold even into some masterpieces, the general

tendency of the better historians was to set themselves free of ornate

rhetoricians and of cheap eloquence. But the ancient historians will

never fail of lofty poetical power and elevation for this reason (not

even the 'prosaic' Polybius, who sometimes paints most effective

pictures), but will ever retain what is proper to lofty historical

narrative. Cicero and Quintilian, Diogenes and Lucian, all recognize

that history must adopt _verba ferme poetarum,_ that it is _proxima

poetis et quodammodo carmen solutum,_ that _scribitur ad narrandum,

non ad demonstrandum,_ that ἔχει τι ποιητικόν, and the like. What the

best historians and theorists sought at that time was not the aridity

and dryness of mathematical or physical treatment (such as we often

hear desired in our day), but gravity, abstention from fabulous and

pleasing tales, or if not from fabulous then from frivolous tales, in

fact from competition with the rhetoricians and composers of histories

that were romances or gross caricatures of such. Above all they desired

that history should remain faithful to real life, since it is the

instrument of life, and a form of knowledge useful to the statesman and

to the lover of his country, and by no means docile to the capricious

requirements of the unoccupied seeking amusement.

This theory of historiography, which may be found here and there in

a good many special treatises and in general treatises on the art of

speech, finds nowhere such complete and conscious expression as in the

frequent polemical interludes of Polybius in his _Histories,_ where

the polemic itself endows it with precision, concreteness, and savour.

Polybius is the Aristotle of ancient historiography: an Aristotle who

is both historical and theoretical, completing the Stagirite, who in

the vast expanse of his work had taken but little interest in history

properly so called. And since so great a part of the ancient narratives

lives in our own, so there is not one of the propositions recorded

that has not been included and has not been worthy of being included

in our treatises. And if, for example, the maxim that history should

be narrated by men of the world and not by the simply erudite or by

philologists, that it is born of practice and assists in practice,

has been often neglected, the blame falls on those who neglect it. A

further blunder committed by such writers has been to forget completely

the τι ποιητικόν and to pay court to an ideal of history something like

an anatomical map or a treatise of mechanics.

But the defect that ancient historiography exposes to our gaze is of

another sort. The ancients did not observe it as a defect, or only

sometimes, in a vague and fugitive manner, without attaching weight to

it, for otherwise they would have remedied it when it occurred. The

modern spirit inquires how the sentiments and conceptions which are now

our ideal patrimony, and the institutions in which they are realized,

have been gradually formed. It wishes to understand the revolutionary

passages from primitive and Oriental to Græco-Roman culture, how

modern ethic was attained through ancient ethic, the modern through

the ancient state, the vast industry and international commerce of

the modern world through the ancient mode of economic production,

the passage from the myths of the Aryans to our philosophies, from

Mycenean to French or Swedish or Italian art of the twentieth century.

Hence there are special histories of culture, of philosophy, of poetry,

of the sciences, of technique, of economy, of morality, of religions,

and so on, which are preferred to histories of individuals or of

states themselves, in so far as they are abstract individuals. They

are illuminated and inspired throughout with the ideas of liberty, of

civilization, of humanity, and of progress. All this is not to be found

in ancient historiography, although it cannot be said to be altogether

absent, for with what could the mind of man have ever been occupied,

save by human ideals or 'values'? Nor should the error be made of

considering 'epochs' as something compact and static, whereas they are

various and in motion, or of rendering those divisions natural and

external which, as has been demonstrated, are nothing but the movement

of our thought as we think history, a fallacy linked with the other one

concerning the absolute beginning of history and the rendering temporal

of the forms of the spirit. Whoever is gifted with the patience of

the collector will meet here and there with suggestions and buddings

of those historiographical conceptions of which, generally speaking,

we have denied the existence in the writings of the ancients. He who

finds diversion in modernizing the old may travesty the thoughts of

the ancients, as they have been travestied, so as to render them

almost altogether similar to those of the moderns. In the first book

of Aristotle's _Metaphysics_, for instance, is to be admired a sketch

of the development of Greek philosophy, of the various naturalistic

interpretations which have been in turn proposed for the explanation

of the cosmos, and so on, up to the new orientation of the mind, when,

"compelled by truth itself," it turned toward a different order of

principles--that is to say, till the time of Anaxagoras, "who seems

to be a sober man among the intoxicated," thus continuing up to the

time of Socrates, who founded ethic and discovered the universal and

the definition. A sketch of the history of civilization is to be found

at the beginning of the _History_ of Thucydides, and Polybius will be

found discoursing of the progress that had been made in all the arts,

while Cicero, Quintilian, and several others trace the progress of

rights and of literature. There are also touches of human value in

conflict with one another in the narratives of the struggles between

Greeks and barbarians, between the truly civil and active life of

the former and the proud, lazy habits of the latter. Other similar

conceptions of human values will be found in many comparisons of

peoples, and above all in the way that Tacitus describes the Germans

as a new moral power rising up against that of ancient Rome, and

perhaps also in the repugnance which the same historian experiences

at seeing before him the Jews, who follow rites _contrarius ceteris

mortalibus._ Finally, Rome, mistress of the world, will sometimes

assume in our eyes the aspect of a transparent symbol of the human

ideal, analogous to Roman law, gradually idealized in the form of

natural law. But here it is rather a question of symbols than of

conceptions, of our own conclusions than of the thoughts proper to the

ancients. When, for instance, we examine the history of philosophy

of Aristotle as outlined by him, we find that it consists above all

in a rapid critical account to serve as propædeutic to his system;

and literary and artistic histories and histories of civilization

seem often to be weakened by the prejudice that these are not really

necessary mental forms, but luxuries and refinements. At the utmost

we can speak of exceptions, incidents, tentatives; which does not in

any way alter the comprehensive impression and general conclusion to

the effect that the ancients never possessed explicit histories of

civilization, philosophy, religions, literature, art, or rights: none,

in fact, of the many possessed by ourselves. Nor did they possess

'biography' in the sense that we do, as the history of the ideal

function of an individual in his own time and in the life of humanity,

nor the sense of development, and when they speak of primitive times

they rarely feel that they are primitive, but are rather disposed to

transfigure them poetically, in the same way that Dante did by the

mouth of Cacciaguida that Fiorenza which "stood soberly and modestly at

peace" within the circle of the ancient days. It was one of the "severe

labours" of our Vico to recover the crude reality of history beneath

these poetic idylls. In this work he was assisted, not by the ancient

historiographers, but by documents and mostly by languages.

The physiognomy of the histories of the ancients as described very

accurately reflects the character of their philosophy, which never

attained to the conception of the spirit, and therefore also failed

to attain to that of humanity, liberty, and progress, which are

aspects or synonyms of the former. It certainly passed from physiology

or cosmology to ethic, logic, and rhetoric; but it schematized and

materialized these spiritual disciplines because it treated them

empirically. Thus their ethic did not rise above the custom of

Greece and Rome, nor their logic above abstract forms of reasoning

and discussing, nor their poetic above classes of literature. For

this reason all assume the form of precepts. 'Anti-historical

philosophy' has been universally recognized and described, but it

is anti-historical because anti-spiritual, anti-historical because

naturalistic. The ancients also failed to notice the deficiency

observed by us, for they were entirely occupied with the joy of the

effort of passing from myth to science and thus to the collection and

classification of the facts of reality. That is to say, they were

engrossed upon the sole problem which they set themselves to solve,

and solved so successfully that they supplied naturalism with the

instruments which it still employs: formal logic, grammar, the doctrine

of the virtues, the doctrine of literary classes, categories of civil

rights, and so forth. These were all Græco-Roman creations.

But that ancient historians and philosophers were not explicitly aware

of the above defect in its proper terms, or rather in our modern terms,

does not mean that they were not to some extent exercised by it. In

every historical period exist problems theoretically formulated and for

that very reason solved, while others have not yet arrived at complete

theoretical maturity, but are seen, intuited, though not yet adequately

thought. If the former are the positive contribution of that time to

the chain whose links form the human spirit, the latter represent an

unsatisfied demand, which binds that time in another way to the coming

time. The great attention paid to the negative aspect of every epoch

sometimes leads to the forgetting of the other aspect, and to the

consequent imagining of a humanity that passes not from satisfaction

to satisfaction through dissatisfaction, but from dissatisfaction

to dissatisfaction and from error to error. But obscurities and

discordances are possible in so far as light and concord have been

previously attained. Thus they represent in their way progress, as is

to be seen from the history that we are recounting, where we find them

very numerous for the very reason that the age of mythologies and of

prodigies has been left behind. If Greece and Rome had not been both

more than Greece and more than Rome, if they had not been the human

spirit, which is infinitely greater than any Greece and any Rome--its

transitory individuations--they would have been satisfied with the

human portraits of their historians and would not have sought beyond.

But they did seek beyond--that is to say, those very historians and

philosophers sought; and since they had before them so many episodes

and dramas of human life, reconstructed by their thought, they asked

themselves what was the cause of those events, reasonably concluding

that such a cause might be one fact or another, a particular fact; and

for this reason they began to distinguish between facts and causes,

and, in the order of causes themselves, between cause and occasion,

as does Thucydides, or between beginning, cause, and occasion ἀρχή,

αἰτία, πρόφασις, like Polybius. They thus became involved in disputes

as to the true cause of this or that event, and ever since antiquity

attempts have been made to solve the enigma of the 'greatness' of

Rome, assuming in modern times the guise of a solemn experimentum of

historical thought and thus forming the diversion of those historians

who linger behind. The question was often generalized in the other

question as to the motive power behind all history; and here too appear

doctrines, afterward drawn out to great length, such as that the form

of the political constitution was the cause of all the rest, and that

other doctrine relating to climate and to the temperaments of peoples.

The doctrine principally proposed and accepted was that of the natural

law of the circle in human affairs, the perpetual alternation of

good and evil, or the passage through political forms, which always

returns to the form from which it has taken its start, or as growth

from infancy to manhood, declining into old age and decrepitude and

ending in death. But a law of this sort, which satisfied and still

satisfies the Oriental mind, did not satisfy the classical mind,

which had a lively sense of human effort and of the stimulus received

from obstacles encountered and conflicts endured. Hence therefore the

further questions: Does fate or immutable necessity oppress man, or is

he not rather the plaything of capricious fortune, or is he ruled by a

wise and sagacious providence? It was also asked whether the gods are

interested in human affairs or not. These questions met with answers

that are sometimes pious, advocating submission to the divine will and

wisdom, sometimes, again, inspired with the notion that the gods are

not concerned with human affairs themselves, but solely with vengeance

and punishment. All these conceptions lack firmness, and are for the

most part confused, since a general uncertainty and confession of

ignorance prevails in them: _in incerto judicium est,_ said Tacitus,

almost summing up the ancient argument on the subject in this epigram,

or rather finding non-thought, failure to understand, to be the result

of the argument.

What we do not understand we do not dominate; on the contrary, it

dominates us, or at least menaces us, taking the form of evil; hence

the psychological attitude of the ancients toward history must be

described as pessimistic. They saw much greatness fall, but they never

discovered the greatness that does not fall and that rises up greater

after every fall. For this reason a flood of bitterness inundates

their histories. Happiness, beauty of human life, always seemed to be

something that had been and was no longer, and were it present would

have soon been lost. For the Romans and those professing the cult of

Rome, it was primitive, austere, victorious Rome; and all the Roman

historians, big and little, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, Paterculus and

Florus, fix their gaze upon that image, as they lament the corruption

of later days. Once it was Rome that trampled the world underfoot;

but they knew that the triumphant queen must some day become slave

from queen that once she was. This thought manifests itself in the

most various forms, from the melancholy meditations of Scipio upon the

ruins of Carthage to the fearful expectation of the lordship which--as

Persia to Babylonia and Macedonia to Persia--must succeed to that of

the Romans (the theory of the 'four monarchies' has its origin in the

Græco-Roman world, whence it filtered into Palestine and into the

Book of Daniel). Sometimes repressed, sometimes outspoken, we hear

the anxious question: Who will be the successor and the gravedigger?

Will it be the menacing Parthian? Will it be the Germans, so rich in

new and mysterious energy?--all this, despite the proud consciousness

of ancient times that had uttered the words "Rome, the eternal city."

Certainly, that general pessimism is not altogether coherent, for no

pessimism can be so altogether, and here and there appear fugitive

hints of a perception of human progress in this or that part of life.

We find, for instance, Tacitus, bitterest of men, remarking that _nec

omnia apud priores meliora, sed nostra quoque ætas multa laudis et

artium imitanda tulit,_ and one of the speakers in the _De oratoribus_

observes that literary forms change with the times and that it is

owing to the _vitio malignitatis humana_ that we hear the perpetual

praise of ancient things and the perpetual abuse of things modern.

Another interlocutor in the same dialogue draws attention to the

dialectic connexion between the turbulence of life and the greatness of

art, whence Rome _donec erravit, donec se partibus et dissensionibus

confecit,_ precisely at that time _tulit valentiorem eloquentiam._

This linking together of good and evil is not altogether absent in

ancient philosophy, and is also to be found here and there in ancient

historiography. Sallust, for example, is of opinion that Rome remained

in good health so long as she had Carthage opposed to her and giving

her trouble. Readers of Cicero and of Seneca will be aware that the

idea of humanity also made considerable progress during the last

days of the Republic and the first days of the Empire, owing to the

influence of Stoicism. Divine providence too is courted, as was not

formerly the case, and we also find Diodorus Siculus undertaking to

treat the affairs of all nations as those of a single city (καθάπερ

μιᾶς πολέως). But these promises remain still weak, vague, and inert

(the _promissor_ Diodorus, for example, carried out none of his

grandiose prologue), and in any case they foretell the dissolution

of the classical world. During this epoch the problem as to the

signification of history remains unsolved, because the contradictory

conceptions above mentioned of fortune or of the gods, the belief in

a universal worsening of things, in a fall or a regression, which had

already been expressed in many ancient myths, were not by any means

solutions.

Owing to their failure to realize spiritual value as the immanent

progressive force in history, even the loftiest of the ancient

historians were not able to maintain the unity and autonomy of

historiographical work, which in other respects they had discovered

and asserted. Although they had penetrated the deception exercised by

those histories that are really poetry, or lies and partisanship, or

collections of material and unintelligent piling up of erudition, or

instruments of pleasure, affording marvel for simple folk, yet they

were on the other hand incapable of ever setting themselves free of

the preconception of history as directed to an end of edification

and chiefly of instruction. This real heteronomy then appeared to

be autonomy. They are all agreed as to this: Thucydides proposed to

narrate past events in order to predict from them future events,

identical or similar, the perpetual return of human fortunes; Polybius

sought out the causes of facts in order that he might apply them to

analogous cases, and held those unexpected events to be of inferior

importance whose irregularities place them outside rules; Tacitus, in

conformity with his chief interest, which was rather moralistic than

social or political, held his chief end to be the collection of facts

notable for the vice or virtue which they contained, _ne virtutes

sileantur utque pravis dictis factìsque ex posteritate et infamia metus

sit._ Behind them came all the minor historians, all the hypocrites,

who repeated by imitation or involuntary echo or false unction and in a

superficial way what in the greater writers was the result of profound

thought, as, for instance, the Sallusts, the Diogenes, the Diodori,

the Plutarchs, and those that resemble them. Then there were all the

extractors of historical quintessences, of memorable deeds and words of

statesmen, captains, and philosophers, and even of women (the γυναικῶν

ἀρεταί). Ancient historiography has been called 'pragmatical,' and

such it is, in the double sense of the word, ancient and modern: in so

far as it limits itself to the earthly side of things and especially

to the political (the 'pragmatic' of Polybius), and in so far as it

adorns them with reflections and advice (the 'apodictic' of the same

historian-theorist).

This heteronomous theory of history does not always remain merely

theory, prologue, or frame, but sometimes operates so as to lead to

the mingling of elements that are not historiographical with history,

such as, for instance, is the case with the 'speeches' or 'orations' of

historical personages, not delivered or not in agreement with what was

really said, but invented or arranged by the historian and put into the

mouths of the personages. This, in my opinion, has been wrongly looked

upon as a survival of the 'epic spirit' in ancient historiography, or

as a simple proof of the rhetorical ability of the narrators, because,

if the first explanation hold as to some of the popular writers and the

second as to certain rhetoricians, the origin of those falsifications

was with the greater historians nothing but the fulfilment of the

obligation of teaching and counselling accepted by them. But when such

ends had been assigned to history, its intrinsic quality of truth

and the line of demarcation which it drew between real and imaginary

could not but vacillate to some extent, since the imaginary sometimes

served excellently well and even better than the real for those ends.

And setting aside Plato, who despised all knowledge save that of the

transcendental ideas, did not Aristotle himself ask whether the greater

truth belonged to history or to poetry? Had he not indeed said that

history is 'less philosophical' than poetry? And if so why should not

history have availed itself of the aid of poetry and of imagination?

In any case, resistance could be opposed to this ulterior perversion

by seeking the truth with vigilant eye, and also by reducing the

share of the imaginary speeches and other parerga co the smallest

dimensions. But it was impossible to dispense with belief in the end

of instruction, because it was in any case necessary that history

should have some end, and a true end had not been discovered, and

the end of instruction performed almost the function of a metaphor of

the truth, since it was to some extent the nearest to the truth. In

Polybius critical vigilance, scientific austerity, a keen desire for

ample and severe history, attain to so high a level that one would feel

disposed to treat the historian of Megalopolis like one of those great

pagans that medieval imagination admitted to Paradise, or at least to

Purgatory, as worthy of having known the true God by extraordinary

means and as a reward for their intense moral conscience. But if we

envisage the matter with greater calmness we shall have to consign

Polybius also to the Limbo where those who "were before Christianity"

and "did not duly adore God" are received. They were men of great value

and reached the boundary, even touching it, but they never passed

beyond.

[1] See pp. 112-116.

III

MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

For the same reason that we must not look upon the beginning of

any history as an absolute beginning, or conceive of epochs in a

simplicistic manner, as though they were strictly limited to the

determinations represented by their general character, we must

be careful not to identify the humanistic conception of history

with the ancient epoch of historiography which it characterizes or

symbolizes--in fact, we must not make historical the ideal categories,

which are eternal. Græco-Roman historiography was without doubt

humanistic, but it was a Græco-Roman humanism--that is to say, it not

only had all the limitations that we have been pointing out, but also

the special physiognomy which such humanism assumes in the ancient

historians and thinkers, varying more or less in each one of them.

Not only was it thus humanistic, but other formations of the same

sort probably preceded, as they certainly followed, it in the course

of the centuries. It is perhaps attractive, but it is also artificial

(and contrary to the true concept of progress), to conceive of the

history of philosophy and of historiography as of a series of ideal

phases, which are traversed once only, and to transform philosophers

into categories and categories into philosophers, making synonymous

Democritus and the atom, Plato and the transcendental idea, Descartes

and dualism, Spinoza and pantheism, Leibnitz and monadism, whittling

down history to the dimensions of a _Dynastengeschichte_, as a German

critic has satirically described it, or treating it according to a

sort of 'line of buckets' theory, as an Englishman has humorously

described it. Hence, too, the view that history has not yet appeared in

the world, or that it has appeared for the first time and by flashes,

in response to the invocations made by the historian and the critic of

the present day. But every thinking of history is always adequate to

the moment at which it appears and always inadequate to the moment that

follows.

The opportuneness of this warning is confirmed by the astonishment of

those who consider the passage from ancient to Christian or medieval

historiography; for what can be the meaning of this passage, in which

we find ourselves faced with a miraculous and mythological world all

over again, identical as it seems, in its general characteristics,

with that of the ancient historians, which has disappeared? It is

certainly not progress, but rather falling into a ditch, into which

also fall all the dearest illusions relating to the perpetual advance

of humanity. And the Middle Ages did seem to be a ditch or a declivity,

sometimes during the period itself and most clearly at the Renaissance,

and this image is still represented in common belief. Restricting

ourselves solely to the domain of historiography, and following up

the impression of astonishment at first caused by it, we end by

representing events at the beginning of the Middle Ages somewhat in the

way they appeared to our writer Adolfo Bartoli, in his introductory

volume to the _History of Italian Literature,_ which is all broken up

with cries of horror and with the gesture of covering the face lest

he should see so much ugliness. "We are in a world," writes Bartoli,

when speaking of Gregory of Tours, "where thought has descended so low

as to cause pity, in a world where a conception of history no longer

exists," and history also becomes "a humble handmaid to theology--that

is to say, an aberration of the spirit." And after Gregory of Tours

(continues Bartoli) there is a further fall: "Behold Fredigarius, in

whom credulity, ignorance, and confusion surpass every limit... there

survives in him nothing of a previous civilization." After Fredigarius,

with the monastic chronicle, we take another step down-ward toward

nothingness, though this would seem to be impossible. Here "we seem to

see the lean monk putting his trembling head out of the narrow window

of his cell every five or eleven years, to make sure that men are not

all dead, and then shutting himself up again in the prison, where he

lives only in the expectation of death." We must protest against such

shrinking back (which makes the critic of to-day look like the "lean

monk" whose appearance he has so vividly portrayed); we must assert

that mythology and miracle and transcendency certainly returned in

the Middle Ages--that is to say, that these ideal categories again

acted with almost equal force and that they almost reassumed their

ancient bulk, but they did not return _historically identical_ with

those of the pre-Hellenic world. We must seek in the heart of their

new manifestations for the effective progress which is certainly

accomplished by Gregory of Tours and Fredigarius, and even by the

monkish chroniclers.

The divinity descends again to mingle anthropomorphically with the

affairs of men, as a most powerful or ultra-powerful personage among

the less powerful; the gods are now the saints, and Peter and Paul

intervene in favour of this or that people; St Mark, St Gregory,

St Andrew, or St January lead the array of the combatants, the one

vying with the other, and sometimes against the other, playing

malicious tricks upon one another; and in the performance or the

non-performance of an act of worship is again placed the loss or gain

of a battle: medieval poems and chronicles are full of such stories.

These conceptions are analogous to the antique, and indeed they are

their historical continuation. This is not only so (as has so often

been pointed out) owing to the attachment of this or that particular

of ancient faith to popular religion and to the transformation of

gods into saints and demons, but also, and above all, to a more

substantial reason. Ancient thought had left fortune, the divinity,

the inscrutable, at the edge of its humanism, with the result that

the prodigious was never completely eliminated even from the most

severe historians--the door at any rate was left open by which it

could return. All are aware with how many 'superstitions' philosophy,

science, history, and customs were impregnated during late antiquity,

which in this respect was not intellectually superior, but indeed

inferior, to the new Christian religion. In the latter the fables

gradually formed and miracles which were believed became spiritualized

and ceased to be 'superstitions'--that is to say, something extraneous

or discordant to the general humanistic conception--and set themselves

in harmony with the new supernaturalistic and transcendental

conception, of which they were the accompaniment. Thus myth and

miracle, becoming intensified in Christianity, became at the same time

different from ancient myths and miracles.

They were different and more lofty, because they contained a more lofty

thought: the thought of spiritual worth, which was not peculiar to this

or to that people, but common to the whole of humanity. The ancients

had indeed touched upon this thought in speculation, but they had never

possessed it, and their philosophers had sought it in vain or attained

to it only in abstract speculation not capable of investing the whole

soul, as is the case with thoughts that are profoundly thought, and

as was the case with Christianity. Paulus Orosius expresses this in

his _Historæ adversus paganos_, in such accents as no Græco-Roman

historian had been able to utter: _Ubique patria, ubique lex et

religio mea est.... Latitudo orientis, septentrionis copiositas,

meridiana diffusio, magnarum insularum largissimæ tutissimæque sedes

mei juris et nominis sunt, quia ad Christianos et Romanos Romanus et

Christianus accedo._ To the virtue of the citizen is added that of man,

of spiritual man, who puts himself on a level with the truth by means

of his religious faith and by his work, which is humanly good. To the

illustrious men among the pagans are opposed illustrious men among the

Christians who are better than illustrious, being saints; and the new

Plutarch is found in the _Vitæ patrum_ or _eremitarum,_ in the lives

of the confessors of Christ, of the martyrs, of the propagators of

the true faith; the new epics describe the conflicts of the faithful

against unbelievers, of Christians against heretics and Islamites.

There is here a greater consciousness of conflict than the Greeks had

of the conflict between Greeks and barbarians, or freedmen and slaves,

which were usually looked upon rather as representing differences of

nature than of spiritual values. _Ecclesiastical history_ now appears,

no longer that of Athens or of Rome, but of religion and of the Church

which represented it in its strifes and in its triumphs--that is to

say, the strifes and triumphs of the truth. This was a thing without

precedent in the ancient world, whose histories of culture, of art

or philosophy, did not go beyond the empirical stage, as we have

seen, whereas ecclesiastical history has a spiritual value as its

subject, by means of which it illuminates and judges facts. To censure

ecclesiastical history because it overrules and oppresses profane

history will perhaps be justified, as we shall see, from certain

points of view and in a certain sense; but it is not justifiable as a

general criticism of the idea of that history, and, indeed, when we

formulate the censure in these terms we are unconsciously pronouncing

a warm eulogy of it. The _historia spiritalis_ (as we may also call

it, employing the title of Avito's poem) could not and in truth would

not consent to be a mere part, or to suffer rivals at its side: it

must dominate and affirm itself as the whole. And since history

becomes history of the truth with Christianity, it abandons at the

same time the fortuitous and chance, to which the ancients had often

abandoned it, and recognizes its own proper law, which is no longer

a natural law, blind fate, or even the influence of the stars (St

Augustine confutes this doctrine of the pagans), but rationality,

intelligence, _providence._ This conception was not unknown to ancient

philosophy, but is now set free from the frost of intellectualism and

abstractionism and becomes warm and fruitful. Providence guides and

disposes the course of events, directing them to an end, permitting

evils as punishments and as instruments of education, determining the

greatness and the catastrophes of empires, in order to prepare the

kingdom of God. This means that for the first time is really broken the

idea of the _circle,_ of the perpetual return of human affairs to their

starting-point, of the vain labour of the Danaïds (St Augustine also

combats the _circuitus_); history for the first time is here understood

_as progress_: a progress that the ancient historians did not succeed

in discovering, save in rare glimpses, thus falling into unconsolable

pessimism, whereas Christian pessimism is irradiated with hope. Hence

the importance to be attributed to the _succession of empires_ and to

the function fulfilled by each of them, and especially with regard

to the Roman Empire, which politically unified the world that Christ

came to unify spiritually, to the position of Judaism as opposed to

Christianity, and the like. These questions have been answered in

various ways, but on the common assumption that divine intelligence

had willed those events, that greatness and that decadence, those joys

and afflictions, and therefore that all had been necessary means of

the divine work, and that all had competed in and were competing in

the final end of history, linked one with the other, not as effects

following from a blind cause, but as stages of a process. Hence, too,

history understood as _universal_ history, no longer in the sense of

Polybius, who narrates the transactions of those states which enter

into relations with one another, but in the profounder sense of a

history of the universal, of the universal by excellence, which is

history in labour with God and toward God. By means of this spirit

which invests them, even the most neglected of the chronicles become

surrounded with a halo, which is wanting to the classical histories of

Greece and Rome, and which, however distant they be from our particular

view-points, yet in their general aspect makes them very near to our

heart and mind.

Such are the new problems and the new solutions which Christianity

brought to historical thought, and it may be said of them, as of the

political and humanistic thought of the ancients, that they constitute

a solid possession of perpetual efficacy for the human spirit. Eusebius

of Cæsarea is to be placed beside Herodotus as 'father' of modern

historiography, however little disposed it may be to recognize its

parents in that barbaric author and in the others who were called

'fathers of the Church,' to whom, and particularly to St Augustine, it

yet owes so great a part of itself. What are our histories of culture,

of civilization, of progress, of humanity, of truth, save the form of

ecclesiastical history in harmony with our times--that is to say, of

the triumph and propagation of the faith, of the strife against the

powers of darkness, of the successive treatments of the new evangel, or

good news, made afresh with each succeeding epoch? Do not the modern

histories, which narrate the function performed or the pre-eminence

assumed by this or that nation in the work of civilization, correspond

to the _Gesta Dei per Francos_ and to other like formulas of medieval

historiography? And our universal histories are such not only in the

sense of Polybius, but also of the universal as ideal, purified and

elevated in the Christian sense; hence the religious sentiment which we

experience on approaching the solemnity of history.

It will be observed that in presenting it in this way we to some extent

idealize the Christian conception; and this is true, but in the same

way and in the same measure as we have idealized ancient humanism,

which was not only humanism, but also transcendency and mystery.

Christian historiography, like ancient historiography, solved the

problems that were set to it, but it did not solve other problems that

were only formed afterward, because they were not set to it. A proof

of this is to be found in the caprices and the myths that accompanied

its fundamental conception. The prodigious and the miraculous, which,

as already observed, surrounded Christian historiography, bore witness

precisely to the incomplete ideality of the new and loftier God,

the thought of whom became converted into a myth, his action into

fabulous anecdotes. Yet when it was not a question of miracles, or when

these were reduced to small compass, attenuated and held back, if not

refuted, there nevertheless remained the miracle of the divinity and

of the truth, conceived as transcendent, separated from and opposed to

human affairs. This too was an attestation of the Christian spirit, in

so far as it surpassed the ancient spirit, not with the calmness and

security of thought, but with the violence of sentiment and with the

enthusiasm of the imagination. Transcendency led to a consideration of

worldly things as external and rebellious to divine things: hence the

dualism of God and the world, of a _civitas colestis_ and of another

that was _terrena,_ of a _civitas_ Dei and of a _civitas diaboli_ which

revived most ancient Oriental conceptions, such as Parseeism, and was

tempered, if not internally corrected, by means of the providential

course of history, internally compromised by that unconquered dualism.

The city of God destroyed the earthly city and took its place, but

did not justify it, although it tried to do so here and there,

in accordance with the logic of its providential and progressive

principle. St Augustine, obliged to explain the reasons of the fortune

of Rome, escaped from the difficulty with the sophism that God conceded

that greatness to the Romans as a reward for their virtues, earthly

though they were and not such as to lead to the attainment of heavenly

glories, but yet worthy the fleeting reward of earthly glory. Thus the

Romans remained always reprobate, but less reprehensible than other

reprobates; there could not have been true virtue where there had not

been true religion. The contests of ideas did not appear as conflicting

forms of the true in its becoming, but simply diabolical suggestions,

which disturbed the truth, which was complete and possessed by the

Church. Eusebius of Cæsarea treated heresies as the work of the

devil, because it was the devil who prompted Simon Magus, and then

Menander, and the two currents of gnosis represented by Saturninus and

Basil. Otto of Frisia contemplated the Roman Empire succeeding to the

Babylonian as son to father, and the kings of the Persians and the

Greeks almost as its tutors and pedagogues. In the political unity of

Rome he discovers a prelude to Christian unity, in order that the minds

of men should form themselves _ad majora intelligenda promptiores et

capaciores,_ be disciplined to the cult of a single man, the emperor,

and to the fear of a single dominant city, that they should learn _unam

quoque fidem tenendam._ But the same Otto imagines the whole world _a

primo homine ad Christum ... exceptis de Israelitico populo paucis,

errore deceptus, vanis superstitionibus deditus, dæmonum ludicris

captus, mundi illecebris irretitus,_ fighting _sub principe mundi

diabolo, until venit plenitudo temporis_ and God sent His son to earth.

The doctrine of salvation as a grace due to the good pleasure of God,

indebita Dei gratia, is not at all an accidental excrescence upon this

conception, but is its foundation or logical complement. Christian

humanity was destined to make itself unhuman, and St Augustine, however

much reverence he excites by the energy of his temperament, by his

gaze ever fixed above, offends us to an equal degree by his lack of

human sympathy, his harshness and cruelty; and the 'grace' of which he

speaks assumes in our eyes the aspect of odious favouritism and undue

exercise of power. It is nevertheless well to remember that by means

of these oscillations and deviations of sentiment and imagination

Christian historiography prepared the problem of the surpassing of

dualism. For if the search for the Christianity of the non-Christians,

for grace due to all men from their very character of men, the truth

of heresies, the goodness of pagan virtue, was a historical task that

has matured slowly in modern times, the division and opposition of

the two histories and the two cities, introduced by Christianity, was

a fundamental necessity, as their unity thought in the providential

divine Unity was a good preparation for it.

Another well-known aspect of this dualism is _dogmatism,_ the

incapacity to understand the concrete particularization of itself by

the spirit in its various activities and forms. This explains the

accusation levelled against ecclesiastical history of overriding and

tyrannically oppressing the whole of the rest of history. This did in

fact take place, because ecclesiastical history, instead of developing

itself in the concrete universal of the spirit, remained rooted in a

particular determination of it. All human values were reduced to a

single value--that is to say, to firmness of Christian faith and to

service of the Church. This value, thus abstractly conceived, became

deprived of its natural virtue and declined to the level of a material

and immobile fact, and indeed the vivid, fluid Christian consciousness

after some centuries of development became solidified in dogmas. That

materialized and motionless dogma necessarily prevailed as a universal

measure, and men of all times were judged according to whether they had

or had not been touched with the divine grace, were pious or impious,

and the lives of the holy fathers and of believers were a Plutarch,

who excluded every other profane Plutarch. This was the dogmatism of

transcendency, which therefore resolved itself into _asceticism,_ in

the name of which the whole actual history of mankind is covered with

contempt, with horror, and with lamentation. This is particularly

noticeable in Augustine, in Orosius, and in Otto of Frisia, but is to

be perceived at least in germ as a tendency among all the historians or

chroniclers of the early Middle Ages. What thoughts are suggested by

the battle of Thermopylæ to Otto of Frisia? _Tædet hic inextricabilem

malorum texere cratem; tamen ad ostendendam mortalium miseriam,

summatim ea attingere volo._ And what by the deeds of Alexander?_

Regni Macedonum monarchia, quæ al ipso cœpit, ipso mortuo cum ipso

finitur.... Civitas autem Christi firmata supra firmam petram_.... With

asceticism is linked the often noted and often ridiculed credulity

of the medieval historians (not to be confounded with the belief in

miracles, originating from religion): this credulity is generally

attributed to the prevalence of imagination, or to social conditions,

which rendered books rare and critical capacity difficult to find--that

is to say, to things which required to be explained in their turn.

Indifference is, indeed, one of the principal sources of credulity,

because no one is ever credulous in the things that touch him closely

and of which he treats, while on the other hand all (as is proved

in daily life) are ready to lend an ear to more or less indifferent

talk. Asceticism, diminishing the interest for things of the world

and for history, assisted in the neglect and dispersion of books

and documents, promoted credulity toward everything heard or read,

unbridling the imagination, ever desirous of the wonderful and

curious, to the disadvantage of discernment. It did this not only

in history properly so called, but also in the science of nature or

natural history, which was also indifferent to one, who possessed the

ultimate truth of religion. The weak capacity for individualization

noticeable in medieval historiography must be attributed to ascetism,

which is usually satisfied with the general character of goodness

or badness (the 'portrait' is very rare in it, as in the figurative

arts of the same age), and it has even less consciousness of the

historical differences of place and time, travestying persons and

events in contemporary costume. It even goes so far as to compose

imaginary histories and false documents, which portray the supposed

type. This extends from Agnello of Ravenna, who declared that he wrote

also the lives of those bishops of Ravenna about whom he possessed no

information, _et credo_ (he said) _non mentitum esse,_ because, if

they filled so high a past, they must of necessity have been good,

charitable, zealous, and so forth, down to the false decretals of the

pseudo-Isidore. We also owe to asceticism the _form of chronicle_ as

its intimate cause, because, when the meaning of particular facts

was neglected, it only remained to note them as they were observed

or related, without any ideological connexion and with only the

chronological connexion. Thus we frequently find among the historians

of the Middle Ages the union (at first sight strange, yet not without

logical coherence) of a grandiose history, beginning with the creation

of the world and the dispersion of the races, and an arid chronicle,

following the other principle and becoming ever more particular and

more contingent as approach is gradually made to the times of the

authors.