union constitutes the chief value of his work. Never- theless, notwithstanding its inaccuracy, the saying of Manzoni also proves how romantic historiography had noted the intimate connexion that prevails between erudition and thought in history, which is the living and thinking again of the document that has been pre- served or restored by erudition, and indeed demands erudition that it may be sought out and prepared. Neither did romanticism limit itself to stating this claim in the abstract, but really created the type of the philologist-thinker (who was sometimes also a poet), from Niebuhr to Mommsen, from Thierry to Fustel de Coulanges, from Troya to Balbo or Tosti. Then for the first time were the great collections and repertories of the erudition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries valued at their true worth; then were new collections promoted, supplementary to or correcting them according to criteria that were ever more rigorous in relation to the subject and to the greater know- ledge and means at disposal. Thus arose the work known as the Monumenta Germanic historka and the German philological school (which was once the last and became the first), the one a model of undertakings of this sort, the other of the disciplines relating to them, for the rest of Europe. The philological claim of the new historiography, aided by the sentiment of nationality, also gave life in our Italy to those histori- cal societies, to those collections of chronicles, of laws, of charters, of * historical archives ' or reviews, institu- tions with which historiographical work is concerned in our day. A notable example of the power to promote the most patient philology inspired with purely historical needs is to be found, among others, in the Corpus inscriptionum latinarumy conceived and carried out by a HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM 279 historian endowed with the passionate energy and the 1 synthetic mind of a Mommsen. In the eighteenth century (with one or two very rare and partial exceptions) historians disdained parchment and in-folios, or opened them impatiently, bibentes et fugientes; but in the nine- teenth century no serious spirit dared to affirm any longer that it was possible to compose history without accurate, scrupulous, meticulous study of the documents upon which it is to be founded.
The pragmatic histories of the last centuries, therefore, melted away at the simple touch of these new historiographical convictions, rather than owing to direct and open criticism or polemic. The word 4 pragmatic/ which used to be a title of honour, began to be pronounced with a tinge of contempt, to designate an inadequate form of historical thought, and the historians of the enlightenment fell into discredit, not only Voltaire and the French, but the Humes, the Robertsons, and other English historians. They appeared now to be quite without colour, lacking in historical sense, their minds fixed only on the political aspect of things, superficial, vainly attempting to ex- plain great events by the intentions of individuals and by means of little things or single details. The theory, too, of history as the orator and teacher of virtue and prudential maxims also disappeared. This theory had enjoyed a long and vigorous life during Grseco-Roman antiquity and again from the Renaissance onward (when I say that all these things disappeared, the exception of the fossils is always to be understood, for these per- sisted at that time and persist in our own day, with the air of being alive). The attitude of the Christian spirit toward history was resumed. This spirit contemplates it as a single process, which does not repeat itself, as 280 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY the work of God, which teaches directly by means of His presence, not as matter that exemplifies abstract teaching, extraneous to itself. The word * pragmatic ' was indeed pronounced with a smile from that time onward, as were the formulas of historia magister vita or that directed ad bene beateque vivendum: let him who will believe these formulas — that is to say, he who echoes traditional thoughts without rethinking them and is satisfied with traditional and vulgar conceptions. What is the use of history? " History itself," was the answer, and truly that is not a little thing.
The new century glorified itself with the title of * the century of history/ owing to its new departures, which were born or converged in one. It had deified and at the same time humanized history, as had never been done before, and had made of it a centre of reality and of thought. That title of honour should be con- firmed, if not to the whole of the nineteenth century, then to its romantic or idealistic period. But this confirmation should not prevent our observing, with equal clearness, the limit of that historicity, without which it would not be possible to understand its later and further advance. History was then at once deified and humanized; but did the divinity and humanity truly flow together in one, or was there not at bottom some separation between the two of them? Was the disagreement between ancient worldly thought and ultramundane Christian thought really healed, or did it not present itself again in a new form, though this form was attenuated and more critical intellectually? And which of the two elements prevailed in this dis- agreement in its abstractness, the human or rather the divine?
These questions suggest the answer, which is further HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM 281 suggested by a memory familiar to all, namely, that the romantic period was not only the splendid age of the great evolutionary histories, but also the fatal age of the philosophies of history, the transcendental histories. And indeed, although the thought of im- manence had grown gradually more and more rich and profound during the Renaissance and the enlighten- ment, and that of transcendency ever more evanescent, the first had not for that reason absorbed the second in itself, but had merely purified and rationalized it, as Hellenic philosophy and Christian theology had tried to do in their own ways in their own times. In the romantic period, purification and rationalization continue, and here was the mistake as well as the merit of romanticism, for it was no longer a question of setting right that ancient opinion, but of radically inverting and remaking it. The transcendental conception of history was no longer at that time called revelation and apoca- lypse, but philosophy of history, a title taken from the enlightenment (principally from Voltaire), although it no longer had the meaning formerly attributed to it of history examined with an unprejudiced or philo- sophical spirit adorned with moral and political reflections, but the meaning, altogether different, of a philosophical search of the sphere above or below that of history — in fact, of a theological search, which remained theological, however lay or speculative it may have been. And since a search of this sort always leads to a rationalized mythology, there is no reason why the name of * mythology ' should not be extended to the philosophy of history, or the name of ' philosophy of history* to mythology, as I have extended it, calling all transcendental conceptions of history ' philosophy of history,' for they all separate the fact and the idea, the 282 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY event and its explication, action and end, the world and God. And since the philosophy of history is transcendental in its internal structure, it is not sur- prising that it showed itself to be such in all the very varied forms that it assumed in the romantic period, even among philosophers as avid of immanence as Hegel, a great destroyer of Platonism, who yet remained to a considerable extent engaged in it, so tenacious is that enemy which every thinker carries in himself and which he should tear from his heart, yet cannot resist.
But without entering into a particular account of the assumptions made by the romantics and idealists in the construction of their * philosophies of history,' it will be sufficient to observe the consequences, in order to point out the transcendental tendency of their con- structions. These were such as to compromise romantic histories in the method and to damage them in the execution, though they were at first so vigorously con- ceived as a unity of philosophy and philology. One of the consequences was precisely the falling again into contempt of erudition among those very people who adopted and promoted it, and on other occasions a re- commendation of it in words and a contempt of it in deeds. This contradictory attitude was troubled with an evil conscience, so much so that its recommendations sound but little sincere, the contempt timid, when it shows itself, though it is more often concealed. Never- theless one discovers fleeting words of revelation among these tortuosities and pretences, such as that of an a priori history (Fichte, Schelling, Krause, and, to a certain extent at least, Hegel), which should be true history, deduced from the pure concepts, or rendered divine in some vision of the seer of Patmos, a history which should HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM 283 be more or less different from the confusion of human events and facts, as philosophical history, leaving outside it as refuse a merely narrative history, which should serve as raw material or as text for the sermons and precepts of the moralists and politicians. And we see rising from the bosom of a philosophy, which had tried to make history of itself, by making philosophy also history (proof that the design had not been really translated into act), the distinction between philosophy and history, between the historical and the philosophical way of thinking, and the mutual antipathy and mutual unfriendliness of the two orders of researchers. The 1 professional ' historians were obliged to defend them- selves against their progenitors (the philosophers), and they ended by losing all pity for them, by denying that they were philosophers and treating them as intruders and charlatans.
Unpleasantness and ill-will were all the more in- evitable in that the * philosophers of history ' — that is to say, the historians obsessed with transcendency — did not always remain content (nor could they do so, speaking strictly) with the distinction between philo- sophical and narrative history, and, as was natural, attempted to harmonize the two histories, to make the facts harmonize with the schemes which they had imagined or deduced. With this purpose in view, they found themselves led to use violence toward facts, in favour of their system, and this resulted in certain most important parts being cut out, in a Procrustean manner, and in others that were accepted being perverted to suit a meaning that was not genuine but imposed upon them. Even the chronological divisions, which formed a merely practical aid to narratives, were tortured (as was the custom in the Middle Ages) that they might 284 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY be elevated to the rank of ideal divisions. And not only was the light of truth extinguished in the pursuit of these caprices, not only were individual sympathies and antipathies introduced (take as an instance typical of all of them the idealization of Hellas and of this or that one of the Hellenic races), but there appeared a thing yet more personally offensive to the victims — that is to say, there penetrated into history, under the guise of lofty philosophy, the personal loves and hates of the historian, in so far as he was a party man, a church- man, or belonged to this or that people, state, or race. This ended in the invention of Germanism, the crown and perfection of the human race, a Germanism which, claiming to be the purest expression of Arianism, would have restored the idea of the elect people, and have one day undertaken the journey to the East. Thus ' were in turn celebrated semi-absolute monarchy as the absolute form of states, speculative Lutheranism as the absolute form of religion, and other suchlike vain- glorious vaunts, with which the pride of Germany oppressed the European peoples and indeed the whole world, and thus exacted payment in a certain way for the new philosophy with which Germany had endowed the world. But it must not be imagined that the pride of Germany was not combated with its own arms, for if the English speculated but little and the French were too firm in their belief in the Gesta Dei per Francos (become the gestes of reason and civilization), yet the peoples who found themselves in less happy conditions, and felt more keenly the censure of inferiority or of senility thus inflicted upon them, reacted: Gioberti wrote a Primato d'ltalia, and Ciezkowski a Paternostro, which foretold the future primacy of the Slavonic people and more especially of the Poles.
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM 285 Yet another consequence of the ' philosophies of history ' was the reflourishing of " universal histories,' in the fallacious signification of complete histories of humanity, indeed of the cosmos, which the Middle Ages had narrated in the chronicles ab origine mundi and de duabus civitatibus and de quattuor imperiis, and the Renaissance and enlightenment had reduced to mere vulgar compilations, finding the centre for its own interest elsewhere. The imagines mundi returned with the philosophies of history, and such they were them- selves, transcendental universal histories, with the ' philosophy of nature ' belonging to them. The suc- cession of the nations there took the place of the series of empires: to each nation, as formerly to each empire, was assigned a special function, which once fulfilled, it disappeared or fell to pieces, having passed on the lamp of life, which must not pass through the hands of any nation more than once. The German nation was to play there the part of the Roman Empire, which should never die, but exist perpetually, or until the consummation of the ages and the Kingdom of God.
To develop the various forms of the philosophy of history would aid in making clear the internal contra- dictions of the doctrine and in ascribing the reasons for the introduction of certain corrections for the purpose of doing away with the contradictions in question, but which in so doing introduced others. And in making an examination of this kind a special place should be reserved for Vico, who offers a ' philosophy of history ' of a very complex sort, which on the one side does not negate, but passes by in silence the Chris- tian and medieval conception (as it does not deny St Augustine's conception of the two cities or of the elect and Gentile people, but only seriously examines the 286 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY history of the latter), while on the other side it resumes the ancient Oriental motive of the circles (courses and recourses), but understands the course as growth and development, and the recourse as a dialectical return, which on the other hand does not seem to give rise to progress, although it does not seem to exclude it, and also does not exclude the autonomy of the free will or the exception of contingency. In this conception the Middle Ages and antiquity ferment, producing romantic and modern thought.1 But in the romantic period the idea of the circle (which yet contained a great mental claim that demanded satisfaction) gave place to the idea of a linear course, taken from Christianity and from progress to an end, which con- cludes with a certain state as limit or with entrance into a paradise of indefinite progress, of incessant joy without sorrow. In a conception of this kind there is at one time a mixture of theology and of illuminism, as in Herder, at another an attempt at a history according to the ages of life and the forms of the spirit, as with Fichte and his school; then again the idea realizes its logical ideal in time, as in Hegel, or the shadow of a God reappears, as in the deism of Laurent and of several others, or the God is that of the old religion, but modernized, noble, judicious, liberal, as in moderate Catholicism and Protestantism. And since the course has necessarily an end in all these schemes, announced and described and therefore already lived and passed by, attempts to prolong, to prorogue, or to vary that end have not been wanting, such personages as the Abbots Gioacchini arising and calling themselves the 4 Slav apocalyptics ' or by some other name, and adding 1 The exposition and criticism of Vico's thought are copiously dealt with in the second volume of my Saggi filosofici t La filosofia di Giam- battista Vico (Bari, 191 1).
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM 287 new eras to those described. But this did not change anything in the general conception. And there was no change effected in it by the philosophies of history of the second Schelling, for example, which are usually called irrationalistic, or of the pessimists, because it is clear that the decadence which they describe is a progress in the opposite sense, a progress in evil and in suffering, having its end in the acme of evil and pain, or leading indeed to a redemption and then becoming a progress toward the good. But if the idea of circles, which repeat themselves identically, oppresses historical consciousness, which is the consciousness of perennial individuality and diversity, this idea of progress to an end oppresses it in another way, because it declares that all the creations of history are imperfect, save the last, in which history comes to a standstill and which there- fore alone has absolute value, and which thus takes away from the value of reality in favour of an abstraction, from existence in favour of the inexistent. And both of these — that is to say, all the philosophies of history, in whatever way determined — lay in ambush to over- whelm the conceptions of development and the increase in historiographical value obtained through it by romanticism; and when this injury did not occur (as in several notable historians, who narrated history admirably, although they professed to obey the rules of the abstract philosophy of history, which they saluted from near or far, but took care not to introduce into their narratives), it was a proof that the contradiction had not been perceived, or at least perceived as we now perceive it, in its profound dissonance. It was a sign that romanticism too had problems upon which it laboured long and probed deeply, and others upon which it did not work at all or only worked a little and kept waiting, 288 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY satisfying them more or less. History too, like the individual who works, does * one thing at a time,' neglecting or allowing to run on with the help of slight provisional improvements the problems to which it cannot for the time being attend, but ready to direct full attention to them when its hands are free.
VII THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF POSITIVISM THE philosophies of history offended the historical consciousness in three points, as to which it has every right to be jealous: the integrity of historical events, the unity of the narration with the docu- ment, and the immanence of development. And the opposition to the ' philosophy of history/ and to the historiography of romanticism in general, broke out precisely at these three points, and was often violent. This opposition had at bottom a common motive, as has been shown clearly by the frequent sympathy and fraternizing among those who represent it, though dis- sensions as to details are common among them. It is, however, best to consider it in its triplicity for reasons of clearness, and to describe it as that of the historians, the philologists, and the philosophers.
To the historians, by whom we mean those who had a special disposition for the investigation of particular facts rather than theories, and a greater acquaintance with and practice of historical than speculative literature, is due the saying that history should be history and not -philosophy. Not that they ventured to deny philosophy, for on the contrary they protested their reverence for it and even for religion and theology, and condescended to make an occasional rapid and cautious excursion into those waters; but they generally desired to steer their way through the placid gulfs of historical truth, avoiding the tempestuous oceans of the other discipline: philosophy was relegated to the horizon of their works. Nor did they 29o HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY even contest, at least in principle, the right of existence of those grandiose constructions of ' universal history,' but they recommended and preferred national or otherwise monographical histories, which can be sufficiently studied in their particulars, substituting for universal histories collections of histories of states and of peoples. And since romanticism had introduced into those universal histories and into the national histories themselves its various practical tendencies (which the philosophy of his- tory had then turned into dogmas), the historians placed abstention from national and party tendencies upon their programme, although they reserved the right of making felt their patriotic and political aspirations, but, as they said, without for that reason altering the narrative of the facts, which were supposed to move along independently of their opinions, or chime in with them spontaneously in the course of their natural development. And since passion and the philosophic judgment had been con- fused and mutually contaminated in romanticism, the abstention was extended also to the judgment as to the quality of the facts narrated; the reality and not the value of the fact being held to be the province of the historian, appeal being made to what theorists and philosophers had thought about it, where a more pro- found consideration of the problem was demanded. History should not be either German or French, Catholic or Protestant, but it should also not pretend to apply a more ample conception to the solution of these or similar antitheses, as the philosophers of history had tried to do, but rather should neutralize them all in a wise scepticism or agnosticism, and attenuate them in a form of exposi- tion conducted in the tone of a presidential summing-up, where careful attention is paid to the opinions of opposed parties and courtesy is observed toward all. There was HISTORIOGRAPHY OF POSITIVISM 291 diplomacy in this, and it is not astonishing that many diplomatists or disciples of diplomacy should collaborate in this form of history, and that the greatest of all the historians of this school, Leopold Ranke, in whom are to be found all the traits that we have described, should have had a special predilection for diplomatic sources. He always, indeed, combated philosophy, especially the Hegelian philosophy, and greatly contributed to dis- credit it with the historians, but he did this decorously, carefully avoiding the use of any word that might sound too rough or too strong, professing the firm conviction that the hand of God shows itself in history, a hand that we cannot grasp with ours, but which touches our face and informs us of its action. He completed his long and very fruitful labours in the form of monographs, avoiding universal constructions. When, at the end of his life, he set to work to compose a Weltgeschichte^ he carefully separated it from the universe, declaring that it would have been " lost in phantasms and philoso- phemes " had he abandoned the safe ground of national histories and sought for any other sort of universality than that of nations, which " acting upon one another, appear one after the other and constitute a living whole."
In his first book he protested with fine irony that he was not able to accept the grave charge of judging the past or of instructing the present as to the future, which had been assigned to history, but he felt himself capable only of showing " how things really had happened " (wie es eigentlich gewesen); this was his object in all his work, and he held fast to it, thus culling laurels unobtainable by others, attaining even to the writing of the history of the popes of the period of the Counter-Reformation, although he was a Lutheran and remained so all his life. This history was received with favour in all Catholic 2 92 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY