is necessary and is the sole source of history. In treatises upon historical method the sources are usually divided into remains and narratives, meaning by remains (Ueberreste) the things 28o LOGIC PART \ \ which remain as traces of an event (for example, a contract, a letter, a triumphal arch), and by narratives the accounts of the event as they have been communicated by those who were more or less eye-witnesses, or by those who have con sulted the notes of eye-witnesses. But, in truth, narratives are valuable just in so far as it is presumed that they place us in direct contact with the thing that happened and make us live it again, drawing it forth from the obscure depth of the memories that the human race bears with it. Had they not this virtue, they would be altogether useless, as are the narratives to which for one reason or another credence is refused. A hundred or a thousand narratives lacking authenticity are not equal to the poorest authentic document. An authentic narrative is both a document and remains; it is the reality of the fact as it was lived and as it vibrates in the spirit of him who took part in it. The search for veracity and the criticism of the value of sources are reducible in the ultimate analysis, to the isolation of this genuine resonance of fact, by its liberation from perturbing elements, such as the illusions, the false judgments, the preoccupa tions and passions of the witness. Only in so far as this can be successfully done, and in the HISTORY 281 measure in which it is successful, do we have the first condition of history as act of cognition — that something can be intuited and thereby trans- X formable into the subject of the individual judgment, that is to say, into historical narrative.
On this necessity is based the importance The intuitive which in the examination of historians is attached historical research.
to intuition, or touch, or scent, or whatever else it may be called, that is to say, to the capacity (derived in part from natural disposition and in part from practical exercise) of directly intuiting what has occurred, of passing beyond the obstacles of time and space and the alterations produced by chance or human passion. An historian without intuitive faculty, or more exactly (since no one is altogether without it), with but slender intuitive faculty, is condemned to barrenness, however learned and ingenious he may be in argument. He finds himself inferior to others, less learned and less logical than he, inferior even to the uncultured and to the illogical, when it is a question of feeling what lies beneath words and signs, or of reproducing in himself what actually happened. For the same reason, it some times happens that an expert in a given trade is astonished to hear the learned arm-chair historian describe certain orders of facts, of which 282 LOGIC PART 282 LOGIC PART he has no experience and of which he talks as a blind man talks of colours. A sergeant can intuite a march better than a Thiers, and laugh at the millions of men that Xerxes had led into Greece by simply enquiring how they were fed. A political schemer understands a court or ministerial intrigue far better than an honest man like Muratori. A craftsman can reconstruct the successive brush-strokes and the traces of change of mind in a picture better than the erudite and aesthetic historian of art. Historical works perhaps defective or even failures from other points of view, sometimes fascinate by the proof they give of freshness of impression: and this quality may serve to increase our knowledge of facts and to rectify the errors into which their authors have fallen in other respects. To a historian of the French Revolution we can pardon even the mistaking of one personage for another, of a river for a mountain, or the con fusion of months and years, when on the whole he has lived again better than others the soul of the Jacobins, the spiritual conditions of the mob of Paris, the attitude of the peasants of Burgundy or of La Vendee. What is called an historical novel sometimes has in certain respects greater value than a history, if the novel is HISTORY 283 HISTORY 283 inspired by the spirit of the time and the history contains merely an inventory.
The intuitive faculty, indispensable in research, The intuitive faculty in is not less indispensable in historical exposition; historical exposition.
since it is necessary to intuite the actual fact, not in a fugitive and sketchy manner, but so and art. firmly as to be able to express it and to fix it in words, in such a way as to transmit its genuine life to others. Hence the specially artistic character that must be possessed by true his torians. Here they resemble pure artists, painting pictures, as they do, composing poems and writing tragic dialogues. Certainly, every thought, even that of the most abstruse philo sopher and mathematician, becomes concrete in artistic form. But the historian (in the somewhat empirical sense of the word) approximates much more nearly to those who express pure intuitions, since he gives literary preference to the subject over the predicate. This has been generally re cognized both by historians, who have freely pre sented themselves as bards of their race invoking the Muse who represents History upon Parnassus, while there is there no representative of Philo sophy, Mathematics, or Science; and by theorists, who have constantly debated the question as to whether history is art. It seems indeed to be 284 LOGIC PART 284 LOGIC PART art, when the predicate or logical element is so well concealed that hardly any attention is paid to it. Difference \ say hardly; because if no attention whatever between history and art. The be paid to it, if literary emphasis become logical predicate or logical element mutilation, art will remain, but history will have in history.
gone. A book of history will no longer merely resemble a poem or romance, but will be a poem or a romance. What is it that, from the point of view of intuition, distinguishes an imaginative vision and an historical narrative? If we open the Divine Comedy or the Rime of Petrarch and read: " In the middle pathway of our life, I found myself in a dark forest...," or, " I raised my thought to where she whom I seek was and find not upon earth..."; and if we open Livy's History, at the place where he recounts the battle of Cannae, and read: " Consules satis ex- ploratis itineribus sequentes Poenum, ut ventum ad Cannas est, ubi in conspectu Poenum habebant, bina castra communiunt" nothing at first seems changed; both are narratives. Yet everything is changed. If we read Livy as we read Dante or Petrarch, the battle of Cannae in the same way as the voyage of Dante to the Inferno, or the passage of the spirit of Petrarch to the third heaven, Livy is no longer Livy, but a story HISTORY 285 HISTORY 285 book. In like manner, if we read a book of stories, as, for example, the Kings of France or the Guerin Meschino, in the same way as they are read by the uneducated man of the people, who seeks history in them, the story book becomes transformed into a historical book, although of a kind that must be criticized and refuted when a higher degree of culture has been attained. This suffices to show the im portance of that predicate, which is sometimes left to be understood in the words, but whose effective presence transforms the pure intuition into the individual judgment and makes history of a poem.
The necessity of the logical element has been vain attempts several times denied, and it has been affirmed that the historian must let things speak for them selves and put into them nothing of his own. This fine phrase may have some reference to a certain truth, as we shall see. But if it is understood as the exclusion of the logical element in favour of pure intuition (and worse still, if it intends to exclude also the category of intuition, for in that case we have simple muteness], it proclaims the death of history. Without the logical element it is not possible to say that even the smallest, the most ordinary fact, belonging 286 LOGIC PART 286 LOGIC PART to our individual and everyday life, has occurred-, as, for instance, that I rose this morning at eight o'clock and took luncheon at twelve. For (to give no other reasons) these historical proposi- \ tions imply the concept of existence or actuality ( and the correlative concept of non-existence or L possibility, since in affirming them I also deny that I only dreamed of rising at eight or of taking luncheon at twelve. All will agree that we cannot speak of a historical fact if we do not know that it is a fact, that is to say, some thing that has happened; even stories become the object of history, in so far as their existence as stories is attributed to them. A story, told without knowing or deciding whether it be or be not a story, is poetry; perceived and told as a story, it is mythography, that is to say, history; the author of the Iliad or the author of the Niebelungen is not Adalbert Kuhn, Jacob Grimm or Max Muller. Extension of But the criterion of existentiality does not historical predicates itself suffice, as some believe, for the effectual beyond that of mere existence, constitution of historical narrative. For what sort of narrative should we have, if we merely said that something had happened, without saying what had happened? That something has happened and does happen at every instant, n HISTORY 287 n HISTORY 287 is not, as we know, the content of historical narrative, because it is the affirmation that being is, or that becoming is. What has been said of the individual judgment, namely, that it is constituted by all the predicates together, that is, of the whole concept, and not by the predicate of existence alone, torn from the others, must also be said of historical narrative. It is truly complete and therefore realized, when the ) intuition, which supplied it with the rough I material, is completely penetrated by the concept, \ in its universality, particularity and singularity. That the consuls, after having sufficiently ex plored the routes, followed the Carthaginian, entered Cannae, and seeing themselves face to face with the army of Hannibal, pitched and fortified their camp (as runs Livy's narrative), implies a crowd of concepts, equal in number to the historical affirmations collected in that sentence. No one ignorant as. to what is man, war, army, pursuit, route, camp, fortification, dream, reality, love, hatred, fatherland, and so on, is capable of thinking such a sentence as this. And the obscurity of one of those concepts is sufficient to make it impossible to form the narrative as a whole, just as any one who does not understand the meaning of the word castra LOGIC LOGIC PART Alleged insuperable variation in judging and presenting historical facts, and consequent claim for a history without judgments.
is not in a position to understand what forms the argument of Livy's narrative. If the sources are changed, the historical narrative changes; but this latter changes no less, if our convictions as to the concepts are changed. The same matter is differently arranged and gives rise to different histories, if it is narrated by a savage or a cultured European, by an anarchist or a conservative, by a protestant or a catholic, by the me of this moment or the same me of ten years hence. Given that all have the same documents before them, each one reads in them a different happening.
But the fact here stated seems to lead straight to despair as to the fate of history, or at least as to its fate, so long as it is bound to the logical element, to convictions about the concepts. When it is observed that the same facts are narrated in the most different way; that what for some is the work of God is for others the work of the Devil; that what for some is the manifesta tion of spiritual forces is for others the product of material movements of the brain, according as it is well or ill-nourished; that to some the good of life lies in every explosion and revolt, while to others it lies only in regular work under the tutelage of laws rigorously observed and made HISTORY 289 HISTORY 289 to be observed, — we arrive at the conclusion of historical scepticism, namely, that history as usually narrated is nothing but a story woven from the passions of men. The one salvation from such a state of degeneration seems to be a return to the pure and simple reproduction of the document, or at least to the pure intuition, which introduces no element of judgment, or of what is called subjective. But this salvation is only a figure of speech, for pure intuition is poetry and not history, and to return to it is equivalent to abolishing history. This, however, is clearly impossible, for the human race has always narrated its doings, and none of us can dispense with establishing at every instant how things have happened, what has really happened, and in what actual or historical conditions he finds himself.
Historical scepticism is, however, as inexact Restriction of variations and and one-sided in the observation of fact as it is exclusion of apparent puerile in the suggestion of a remedy. Certainly, variations. there are divergences between the various accounts of the same fact; but (setting aside apparent divergences, derived from the different interest taken in a given fact, owing to which verbal prominence is given to one or to another aspect of it, and limiting ourselves here to real differences) we must, for the sake of exactitude, u 29O LOGIC PART take account of all the no less real agreements, to be found side by side with these divergences. In virtue of them, for instance, Protestant and Catholic are unanimous in recognizing that Luther and Leo X. existed, that the one produced a definite movement in Germany and that the other had recourse to certain definite prohibitions; and, finally, both Protestant and Catholic recognize (now at least) the corruption of the ecclesiastical orders at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the mundane and political interests of the German princes in the wars of religion. In like manner no one, however revolutionary or con servative he is, will question the bad condition of French finances at the eve of the Revolution; or that Louis XVI. convoked the States General; or that he attempted flight and was stopped at Varennes; or that he was guillotined on the 2ist of January 1793; or that the French Revolution was an event which profoundly changed the social and moral life of the whole of Europe. Owing to this substantial agreement between two historians in very many points, and indeed in the greater part of the narrative, it happens that we can often read and |dvise others to read histories that are tainted with the passions of the partisan, while merely recommending the reader to make HISTORY 291 a mental allowance for these passions. In like manner, we can usefully employ a defective instru ment of measurement, provided we include in the calculation the coefficient of aberration.
As to the remedy, it is clear that if the The overcoming divergences as to the concepts arise from ignor- of -variations by means of ance, prejudice, negligence, illegitimate private Deepening the or national interests, and from other disturb ing passions, that is to say, from insufficient con ceiving of the concepts, or from inexact thought, the remedy is certainly not to be sought in the abandonment of concepts and of thought, but in correcting the former and making perfect the latter. Abandonment would not only be cowardly, but impossible. Having left the Eden of pure intuition and entered the field of history, it is not given us to retrace our steps. There is no returning to blessed and ingenuous ignorance; innocence is lost for ever, and we must no longer aspire to it, but to virtue, which is neither innocent nor ingenuous. Why does what seems good to the Protestant seem bad to the Catholic? Evidently, owing to the different conception that each forms as to this world and the world above us, death and life, reason and revelation, criticism and authority, and so on. It is necessary, then, to open the discussion with the enquiry as to PART 292 LOGIC whether the truth is with the Protestants or with the Catholics, or whether it be not found rather in a third view, which goes beyond both. Once a definite result has been obtained, perplexity will be 'at an end (at least for him who has attained it), and the narrative can be constructed with as much security as the available historical sources permit. The way indicated will seem hard; but it is the only way. Whoever decides to retain his own opinions, received without criticism, will perhaps provide for his own convenience, but he will renounce history and truth. For the rest, we do not here draw up a programme for the future, but simply establish what history is in its true nature, and consequently how it is manifested and has always been manifested. Men in every age have discussed the concepts with which historical reality has been interpreted and have agreed upon very many points, as to which there is no longer any discussion. Both Catholics and Protestants, Revolutionaries and conservatives are, as has been already remarked, more in agreement than they were formerly; because something has passed and penetrated from each to each, or rather the humanity, which is in both, has become elevated. Scepticism accomplishes an easy task, but uses an illusory argument, in history as in V ii HISTORY 293 philosophy, when it catalogues the points of disagreement. These are before the eyes of all, just because they represent the problems which it is important to s'olve. Would it not be worth while to keep in view as of equal importance the points already solved, and to say, for example, that historians are henceforth agreed that Anchises did not sleep with Aphrodite, that the wolf did not suckle Romulus and Remus, and that William Tell did not establish the liberty of the Swiss Cantons? In short, it would not be easy to find either those who support or those who deny Mary's immaculate conception. The Catholic writers who insist upon such disputes are rare, and those who deny are found only in little democratic journals of the inferior sort or of degraded taste.
To drive subjectivity out of history, in order to subjectivity...and objectivity obtain objectivity, cannot therefore mean to drive ™ history: their meaning, away thought to obtain intuition, or worse still, to obtain brute matter, which is altogether in expressible; but to drive away false thought, or passion that usurps the place of truth, and to mount to true thought, rigorous and complete. If we attain to intuition, instead of saving our selves from passion we shall burn in its flames. For intuition says nothing but what we as PART Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral values. Critique.
294 LOGIC individuals experience, suffer, and desire. It is just intuition which, when unduly introduced into history, becomes subjectivity sensu deteriori\ whereas thought is true subjectivity, that of the universal, which is at the same time true objectivity, We have thus also solved the question (so much discussed in our day) as to the criterion of value in history, and whether judgments of values, as well as judgments of fact belong to the province of the historian. It is solved, because true judgments of fact, individual judg ments, are precisely judgments of value, or determinations of the proper quality, and there fore of the meaning and value of the fact. We admit no other criterion of value than the concept itself. For this reason, we must also reject the distinction of the history of fact and the criticism (or valuation) of it. Every history is also criticism, and every criticism is also history; to say that a thing is the fact which we call the Divine Comedy is to say what its value is, and so to criticize it. To think normal or neutral values, as to which (according to the most modern historical theories) men of different points of view should agree, seems at the most a mere symbol of that agreement which men are con- HISTORY 295 HISTORY 295 stantly seeking and realizing in the subjectivity- objectivity of thought. This will never be a fact completely agreed upon, because it is a perpetual fieri. It cannot be expected of the future, because it will belong to the future, as it belongs and has belonged to the present and to the past.
If the protest against the intrusion of subjec- various legitimate] tivity into history cannot logically be said to have meanings J J of the protests any legitimate meaning save that of a polemic a^™*cal against false subjectivity in favour of true sub- sul)Jectivify- jectivity, it may also imply, on the literary side, a question of expediency, namely, that in the historical work of art greater importance should be given to the representation of facts than to the theoretical discussion of concepts. A historical should not be transformed into a. philosophical work. But this is a question that must be studied case by case; for what harm could it do, if a historian, beginning by writing a history, were to end by writing a philosophic treatise? Certainly, it would not be a greater evil than if a philosopher, becoming passionate about the facts he gives as instances, were gradually to abandon his first plan and produce a history in place of a system. At bottom it would do no harm, or very little, provided that such philosophy or such historical 296 LOGIC PART 296 LOGIC PART representation were good; and this is precisely what must be examined case by case. A more appropriate meaning of the polemic against the subjectivity of history is the recommendation that in narrating history, emphatic, negative, and de- siderative forms should accompany logical judg ments which, as such, are judgments of value, as little as possible. These forms, it is argued, are justifiable in relation to the present or immediate past, because they indicate the direction of the future, but in relation to the remote past they are usually empty and superfluous. Indeed, to rage against Marius or Sulla, Csesar or Pompey, Frederick Barbarossa or the burgesses of Lombardy, is somewhat vain, because those historical personages have, in general, no near or practical interest. But, on the other hand, it is also true that these characters always have some near and practical interest, and in that measure we cannot prevent history, even of the remote past, being here and there revived with the accents of our present and of our future. Still more legitimate is the significance of that polemic when the intention is to blame the habit of those who assume the functions of praise or blame, in relation not only to men, but to historical events. They applaud paganism, abuse HISTORY 297 HISTORY 297 Christianity, weep over the fall of the Roman Empire, deplore the formation of Islamism, regret that Buddhism should not have been disseminated in Europe, sympathize with the Reformation, or disapprove of Catholicism after the Council of Trent. To them was addressed the saying that history is not to be judged but to be narrated. But it would be more accurate to say that history is not to be judged by the categories by which we judge the actions of individuals, which are subject to the dialectic of good and evil, because the action of an individual differs from the historical event, which transcends individual wills. But the definition of individuality and of event goes outside the gnoseology of history, and more properly belongs to the Philosophy of the Practical.1 The conviction that has been gained as The demand for a theory to the necessity of the logical element, of of historical facts.
concepts, criteria, or values, for the formation of narrative, has induced some to demand, not only that the historian should continually have clearly and firmly in mind the concepts that he employs and his intention in employing them, but that a theory of historical factors or, as 1 See on this point my Philosophy of the Practical, part i. sect. ii. / chaps, v.-vi.
2Q8 LOGIC PART