that classic work by supplying, with a complete lack of historical sense, the introductions and additions that are not needed. But de Sanctis, who took great pains to select the best point of departure for the narrative of the history of Italian literature, and finally decided to begin with a brief sketch of the state of culture at the Suabian court and of the Sicilian poetical school, did not hesitate a moment in rejecting all abstractions of lan- guages and races which to his true historical sense did not appear to be reconcilable with the tenzone of Ciullo, with the rhythms of Friar Jacob, or with the ballades of Guido Cavalcanti, which are quite concrete things.
We must also remember that plans for classification and pseudo-historical arrangements of their analogies are created not only upon the bodies of histories that are living and really reproducible and rethinkable, but also upon those that are dead — that is to say, upon news items, documents, and monuments. This observation makes more complete the identification of imaginary histories arising from the natural sciences with those which have their source in the moral sciences. The foundation of both is therefore very often not historical intelligence, but, on the contrary, the lack of it, and their end not only that of aiding living history and keeping it alive, but also the mediate end of assisting in the prompt handling of the remains and the cinders of the vanished world, the inert residues of history.
The efficacy of this enlargement of the concept of abstract history, which is analogical or naturalizing in respect to the field known as ' spiritual ' (and thus separated from that empirically known as ' natural '), cannot be doubted by one who knows and remembers the great consequences that philosophy draws from the resolution of the realistic concept of ' nature ' in the HISTORY OF NATURE 133 idealistic conception of * construction/ which the human spirit makes of reality, looking upon it as nature. Kant worked upon the solution of this problem indefatigably and with subtlety; he gave to it the direction that it has followed down to our own days. And the conse- quence that we draw from it, in respect to the problem that now occupies us, is that an error was committed when, moved by the legitimate desire of distinguishing abstract from concrete history, naturalizing history from thinking history, genuine from fictitious history, a sort of agnosticism was reached, as a final result, by means of limiting history to the field of humanity, which was said to be cognoscible, and declaring all the rest to be the object of metastoria and the limit of human knowledge. This conclusion would lead again to a sort of dualism, though in a lofty sphere. But if metastoria also appears, as we have seen, in the human field, it is clear that the distinction as formulated stands in need of correction; and the agnosticism founded upon it vacillates and falls. There is not a double object before thought, man and nature, the one capable of treatment in one way, the other in another way, the first cognizable, and the second uncognizable and capable only of being constructed abstractly; but thought always thinks history, the his- tory of reality that is one, and beyond thought there is nothing, for the natural object becomes a myth when it is affirmed as object, and shows itself in its true reality as nothing else but the human spirit itself, which sche- matized history that has been lived and thought, or the materials of the history that has already been lived and thought. The saying that nature has no history is to be understood in the sense that nature as a rational being capable of thought has not history, because it is not — or, let us say, it is nothing that is real. The opposite saying, i34 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY that nature is also formative and possesses historical life, is to be taken in the other sense that reality, the sole reality (comprehending man and nature in itself, which are only empirically and abstractly separate), is all develop- ment and life.
What substantial difference can ever be discovered on the one hand between geological stratifications and the remains of vegetables and animals, of which it is possible to construct a prospective and indeed a serial arrangement, but which it is never possible to rethink in the living dialectic of their genesis, and on the other hand the relics of what is called human history, and not only that called prehistorical, but even the historical documents of our history of yesterday, which we have forgotten and no longer understand, and which we can certainly classify and arrange in a series, and build castles in the air about or allow our fancies to wander among, but which it is no longer possible really to think again? Both cases, which have been arbitrarily dis- tinguished, are reducible to one single case. Even in what is called * human history ' there exists a * natural history/ and what is called ' natural history ' also was once ' human ' history — that is to say, spiritual, although to us who have left it so far behind it seems to be almost foreign, so mummified and mechanicized has it become, if we glance at it but summarily and from the outside. Do you wish to understand the true history of a Ligurian or Sicilian neolithic man? First of all, try if it be possible to make yourself mentally into a Ligurian or Sicilian neolithic man; and if it be not possible, or you do not care to do this, content yourself with de- scribing and classifying and arranging in a series the skulls, the utensils, and the inscriptions belonging to those neolithic peoples. Do you wish to understand HISTORY OF NATURE 135 the history of a blade of grass? First and foremost, try to make yourself into a blade of grass, and if you do not succeed, content yourself with analysing the parts and even with disposing them in a kind of imaginative history. This leads to the idea from which I started in making these observations about historiography, as to history being contemporary history and chronicle being past history. We take advantage of the idea and at the same time confirm that truth by solving with its aid the antithesis between a history that is * history ' and a \ history of nature,' which, although it is history, was supposed to obey laws strangely at variance with those of the only history. It solves this antithesis by placing the second in the lower rank of pseudo-history.
APPENDIX I ATTESTED EVIDENCE IF true history is that of which an interior verifica- tion is possible, and is therefore history ideally con- temporary and present, and if history by witnesses is lacking in truth and is not even false, but just neither false nor true (not a hoc est but a fertur\ a legitimate question arises as to the origin and function of those innumerable propositions resumed from evidence criti- cally thrashed out and * held to be true,' although not verified, and perhaps never to be verified, but neverthe- less employed even in most serious historical treatment. When we are writing the history of the doctrine known as the coincidentia oppositorum, or of the poem called / sepokri, the Latin of the Cardinal di Cusa and the verse of Foscolo obviously belong to us, both as to the thoughts and the actual words, pronounced by ourselves to ourselves, and the certainty of those historical facts is at the same time logical truth. But that the De docta ignorantia was written between the end of 1439 and the early part of 1440, and Foscolo's poem on the return of the poet to Italy after his long military service in France, is evidence founded upon proofs, as to which we can only say that they are to be considered valid, because they have been to some extent attested, but we cannot claim them to be true. No amount of acute mental labour upon them can prevent another document or the better reading of an old document destroying them. Nevertheless, no one will treat of the works of the Cusan or of Foscolo without availing ATTESTED EVIDENCE 137 himself of the biographical details as to their authors which have been preserved.
An esteemed methodologist of our day has been tempted to found the faith placed in this order of evi- dence upon a sort of telepathy of the past, an almost spiritualistic revival. But there is nothing so mysteri- ous in the genesis of that belief as to need a risky and fantastic explanation, to which even Horace's Jew would not give credence. On the contrary, it is a question of something that we can observe in process of forma- tion in our private life of every day. We are noting down in our diary, for instance, certain of our acts, or striking the balance of our account. After a certain interval has elapsed those facts fade from memory and the only way of affirming to ourselves that they have happened and must be considered true is the evidence of our notes: the document bears witness; trust the book. We behave in a similar way in respect to the statements of others on the authority of their diaries or account- books. We presume that if the thing has been written down it answers to the truth. Doubtless this assump- tion, like every assumption, may turn out to be false in fact, owing to the note having been made in a moment of distraction or of hallucination, or too late, when the memory of the fact was already imprecise and lacking in certainty, or because it was capriciously made or made with the object of deceiving others. But just for this reason, written evidence is not usually accepted with closed eyes; its verisimilitude is examined and we confront it with other written evidence, we investigate the probity and accuracy of the writer or witness. It is just for this reason that the penal code threatens with pains and penalties those who alter or falsify documents. And although these and other subtle and 138 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY severe precautions do not in certain cases prevent fraud, deception, and error (in the same way that the tribunals established for the purpose of condemning the guilty often send away the guilty unpunished and sometimes condemn the innocent), yet the use of documents and evidence works out on the whole in accordance with the truth; it is held to be useful and worthy of support and encouragement, because the injuries that it is liable to cause are greatly inferior to those that it prevents.
Now what men do with regard to their private affairs in daily life may be said to be done on a large scale by the human race when it delivers itself of the load of innumerable facts and fixes them externally where they are recoverable in a weakened form as unverifiable documentary evidence, yet are nevertheless such that as a whole we are justified in looking upon them and treating them as true. Historical faith then is not the result of telepathy or spiritualism, but of a wise economic provision, which the spirit continues to realize. In this way we understand historical work directed toward the prevention of alterations and deformations, and its acceptation of certain testimony, as * what must be held to be true in the present state of science,' and its graduation of the rest as uncertain, probable, and most probable to be sometimes accepted in the expec- tation of ulterior inquiries. Finally, it explains the dislike of ' hypercriticism ' when, not content with a constant refinement of criticism, hypercriticism contests the value of the most ingenuous and authoritative testimony. The reason is that it thus breaks the rules of the game that is being played sub regit /a, and only serves at the most to remind those apt to forget it that history by evidence is at bottom an altogether ATTESTED EVIDENCE 139 external history, never fundamental, true history, which is contemporary and present.
This genesis or nature of * attested ' evidence already contains the answer to the other question as to its function. It is clear that this cannot be to posit true history or to take its place, but to supply it with those secondary particulars which it would not be worth while to make the effort of keeping alive and complete in the mind, for this effort would result in damaging what is most important to us. Finally, whether the De docta ignorantia were written some time earlier or later is something that may quite well be determined by a different interpretation of this or that thought of Cusanus, but it does not affect the function that the doctrine of the coincidence of opposites exercises in the formation of logical science. Again, whether the Sepolcri was com- posed or planned prior to Foscolo's visit to France would without doubt change to some extent our representation of the gradual development of the soul and genius of the poet, but it would hardly at all change our mode of in- terpreting his great ode. Those who despair of historical truth, owing to the lack of a verifiable certainty of some particulars, or to the uncertainty and dubiety that surrounds it, resemble him who, having forgotten the chronicle of his life in this or that year, should think that he did not know himself in his present condition, which is both the recapitulation of his past and carries with it his past in all that it really concerns him to know. But, on the other hand, attested evidence that has been held to be true is a stimulus to us to search ourselves more closely, an enrichment of what we have found by means of analysis and meditation and a confirmation or proof of our thoughts, which are not to be neglected, especially when true evidence and attested evidence i4o THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY agree with one another. To refuse the assistance and the facilities afforded by attested evidence, owing to the fear that some of it may prove false, or because all of it possesses an external and somewhat general and vague character, would be to refuse the authority of the human racey and so to commit the sin of Descartes and of Malebranche. This great refusal does not concern or assist the understanding of history. All that does matter and does assist is that authority — including the authority of the human race — should never be allowed to take the place of the thought of humanity \ to which, in any case, belongs the first place.
APPENDIX II ANALOGY AND ANOMALY OF SPECIAL HISTORIES IN the course of the preceding theoretical explana- tions we have denied both the idea of a universal history (in time and space) 1 and that of a general history (of the spirit in its indiscriminate generality or unity),2 and have insisted instead upon the opposite view with its two clauses: that history is always particular and always special, and that these two determinations constitute precisely concrete and effective universality and concrete and effective unity. What has been declared impossible, then, does not represent in any way a loss, for it is on the one hand fictitious universality or the universality of fancy, and on the other abstract univer- sality, or, if it be preferred, confused universality. So- called universal histories have therefore shown themselves to be particular histories, which have assumed that title for purposes of literary notoriety, or as collections, views, and chroniclistical compilations of particular histories, or, finally, as romances. In like manner, general inclusive histories are either so only in name, or set different histories side by side, or they are metaphysical and metaphorical playthings.
As a result of this double but converging negation, it is also advisable to refute a common and deeply rooted belief (which we ourselves at one time shared to some extent)3 that we should arrive at the re-establishment of the universality of the fancy: or that there are some 1 Supra, pp. 55-59. 2 Supra, pp. 1 19-122. s In the ^Esthetic, I, ch. xvii.
I4I 1 42 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY among the special histories, constituted according to the various forms of the spirit (general and individual only in so far as every form of the spirit is the whole spirit in that form), which require universal treatment and others only treatment as monographs. The typical instance generally adduced is that of the difference between the history of philosophy and the history of poetry or of art. The subject of the former is supposed to be the one great philosophical problem that interests all men, of the latter the sentimental or imaginative problems of particular moments, or at the most of particular artists. Thus the former is supposed to be continuous, the latter discontinuous, the former capable of complete universal vision, the second only of a sequence of particular visions. But a more ' realistic * conception of philosophy deprives it of this privilege as compared with the history of art and poetry or of any other special history; for, appearances notwith- standing, it is not true that men have concentrated upon one philosophical problem only, whose successive solu- tions, less and less inadequate, compose a single line of progress, the universal history of the human spirit, affording support and unification to all other histories.
The opposite is the truth: the philosophical problems that men have treated of and will treat of are infinite, and each one of them is always particularly and indivi- dually determined. The illusion as to the uniqueness of the problem is due to logical misapprehension, increased by historical contingencies, whence a problem which owing to religious motives seemed supreme has been looked upon as unique or fundamental, and groupings and generalizations made for practical ends have been held to be real identity and unity.1 * Universal ' 1 See Appendix III.
SPECIAL HISTORIES 143 histories of philosophy, too, like the others, when we examine them with a good magnifying glass, are revealed as either particular histories of the problem that engages the philosopher-historian, or arbitrary artificial con- structions, or tables and collections of many different historical sequences, in the manner of a manual or encyclopaedia of philosophical history. Certainly nothing forbids the composition of abridgments of philosophical histories, containing classifications of particular problems and representing the principal thinkers of all peoples and of all times as occupied with one or another class of problem. This, however, is always a chroniclistical and naturalistic method of treating the history of philosophy, which only really lives when a new thinker connects the problems already set in the past and its intrinsic antecedents with the definite problem that occupies his attention. He provisionally sets aside others with a different connexion, though without for that reason suppressing them, intending rather to recall them when another problem makes their presence necessary. It is for this reason that even in those abridgments that seem to be the most complete and * objective ' (that is to say, ' material ') a certain selection does appear, due to the theoretical interest of the writer, who never altogether ceases to be a historiographer- philosopher. The procedure is in fact just that of the history of art and poetry, where what is really historical treatment, living and complete, is the thought or criti- cism of individual poetical personalities, and the rest a table of criticisms, an abridgment due to contiguity of time or place, affinity of matter or similarity of tempera- ment, or to degrees of artistic excellence. Nor must we say that every philosophic problem is linked to all the others and is always a problem of the whole of i44 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY philosophy, thus differing from the cases of poetry and art, for there is no diversity here either, and the whole of history and the entire universe are immanent in every single work of art.
Now that we have likewise reduced philosophies of history to the rank of particular histories, it is scarcely necessary to demonstrate that the demand being made in several quarters for a ' universal ' or * general I history of science is without foundation. For such a history would be impossible to write, even if we were able to identify or compare the history of science with that of philosophy. But it is doubly impossible both because there are comprised under the name of * science! such diverse forms as sciences of observation and mathematical sciences, and also because in each of these classes themselves the several disciplines remain separate, owing to the irreducible variety of data and postulates from which they spring. If, as we have pointed out, every particular philosophical problem links and places itself in harmony with all other philo- sophical problems, every scientific problem tends, on the contrary, to shut itself up in itself, and there is no more destructive tendency in science than that of ' explaining ' all the facts by means of a * single principle/ substituting, that is to say, an unfruitful metaphysic for fruitful science, allowing an empty word to act as a magic wand, and by * explaining everything ' to 1 explain ' nothing at all. The unity admitted by the history of the sciences is not that which connects one theory with another and one science with another in an imaginary general history of science, but that which connects each science and each theory with the intel- lectual and social complex of the moment in which it appeared. But even here too we must utter the warning