It may seem that the indifference of philological history is thus truly conquered and historical material dominated by a principle and criterion of values. This is the demand persistently addressed to history from all sides in our day by methodologists and philosophers. But I have avoided the word * value ' hitherto, owing to its equivocal meaning, apt to deceive many. For since history is history of the spirit, and since spirit is value, and indeed the only value that is possible to con- ceive, that history is clearly always history of values; and since the spirit becomes transparent to itself as thought in the consciousness of the historian, the value that rules the writing of history is the value of thought. But precisely for this reason its principle of determination cannot be the value known as the value of ' sentiment,' which is life and not thought, and when this life finds PSEUDO-HISTORIES 37 PSEUDO-HISTORIES 37 expression and representation, before it has been domi- nated by thought, we have poetry, not history. In order to turn poetical biography into truly historical biography we must repress our loves, our tears, our scorn, and seek what function the individual has fulfilled in social activity or civilization; and we must do the same for national history as for that of humanity, and for every group of facts, small or great, as for every order of events. We must supersede — that is to say, transform — values of sentiment with values of thought. If we do not find our- selves able to rise to this * subjectivity ' of thought, we shall produce poetry and not history: the historical problem will remain intact, or, rather, it will not yet have come into being, but will do so when the requisite conditions are present. The interest that stirs us in the former case is not that of life which becomes thought, but of life which becomes intuition and imagination.
And since we have entered the domain of poetry, while the historical problem remains beyond, erudition or philology, from which we seem to have started, remains something on this side — that is to say, is alto- gether surpassed. In philological history, notwith- standing the claims made by it, chronicles and documents persist in their crude natural and undigested state. But these are profoundly changed in poetical history; or, to speak with greater accuracy, they are simply dissolved. Let us ignore the case (common enough) of the historian who, with a view to obtaining artistic effects, intentionally mingles his inventions with the data provided by the chronicles and documents, endeavouring to make them pass for history — that is to say, he renders himself guilty of a lie and is the cause of confusion. But the alteration that is continuous and inherent to historiography consists of the choice and connexion of 38 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY the details themselves, selected from the rather owing to motives of sentiment than of thought. This, closely considered, is really an invention or imagin- ing of the facts; the new connexion becomes concrete in a newly imagined fact. And since the data that are taken from the * sources ' do not always lend them- selves with docility to the required connexion, it is considered permissible to solliciter doucement les textes (as, if I am not mistaken, Renan, one of the historian-poets, remarked) and to add imaginary particulars, though in a conjectural form, to the actual data. Vossius blamed those Grecian historians, and historians of other nations, who, when they invent fables, ad effugiendam vanitatis notam satis fore putant si addant solemne suum c aiunt> 1 ferturj vel aliquid quod tantundem valeat. But even in our own day it would be diverting and instructive to catalogue the forms of insinuation employed by historians who pass for being most weighty, with a view to introducing their own personal imaginings: * perhaps,' * it would seem,' ' one would say,' ' it is pleasant to think,' ' we may infer,' * it is probable,' * it is evident,' and the like; and to note how they sometimes come to omit these warnings and recount things that they have themselves imagined as though they had seen them, in order to complete their picture, regarding which they would be much embarrassed if some one, indiscreet as an enfant terrible^ should chance to ask them: " How do you know it? " " Who told you this? " Recourse has been had to the methodological theory of " imagination necessary for the historian who does not wish to become a mere chronicler," to an imagina- tion, that is to say, which shall be reconstructive and integrating; or, as is also said, to " the necessity of inte- grating the historical datum with our personal psychology PSEUDO-HISTORIES 39 or psychological knowledge.' ' This theory, similar to that of value in history, also contains an equivocation. For doubtless imagination is indispensable to the historian: empty criticism, empty narrative, the concept without intuition or imagination, are altogether sterile; and this has been said and said again in these pages, when we have demanded the vivid experience of the events whose history we have undertaken to relate, which also means their re-elaboration as intuition and imagination. Without this imaginative reconstruction or integration it is not possible to write history, or to read it, or to understand it. But this sort of imagination, which is really quite indispensable to the historian, is the imagina- tion that is inseparable from the historical synthesis, the imagination in and for thought, the concreteness of thought, which is never an abstract concept, but always a relation and a judgment, not indetermination but de- termination. It is nevertheless to be radically distin- guished from the free poetic imagination, dear to those historians who see and hear the face and the voice of Jesus on the Lake of Tiberias, or follow Heraclitus on his daily walks among the hills of Ephesus, or repeat again the secret colloquies between Francis of Assisi and the sweet Umbrian countryside.
Here too we shall be asked of what error, then, we can accuse poetical history, if it be poetry (a neces- sary form of the spirit and one of the dearest to the heart of man) and not history. But here also we must reply — in manner analogous to our reply in the case of philological history — that the error does not lie in what is done, but in what is claimed to be done: not in creating poetry, but in calling histories that are poetry poetical histories, which is a contradiction in terms. So far am I from entertaining the thought of objecting to poetry 4o THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY woven out of historical data that I wish to affirm that a great part of pure poetry, especially in modern times, is to be found in books that are called histories. The epic, for instance, aid not, as is believed, die in the nine- teenth century, but it is not to be found in the ' epic poems ' of Botta, of Bagnoli, of Bellini, or of Bandettini, where it is sought by short-sighted classifiers of literature, but in narratives of the history of the Risorgimento, where are poured forth epic, drama, satire, idyll, elegy, and as many other * kinds of poetry ' as may be desired. The historiography of the Risorgimento is in great part a poetical historiography, rich in legends which still await the historian, or have met with him only occasionally and by chance, exactly like ancient or medieval epic, which, if it were really poetry, was yet believed by its hearers, and often perhaps by its composers themselves, to be history. And I claim for others and for myself the right to imagine history as dictated by my personal feeling; to imagine, for instance, an Italy as fair as a beloved woman, as dear as the tenderest of mothers, as austere as a venerated ancestress, to seek out her doings through the centuries and even to prophesy her future, and to create for myself in history idols of hatred and of love, to embellish yet more the charming, if I will, and to make the unpleasant yet more unpleasant. I claim to seek out every memory and every particular, the expressions of countenance, the gestures, the gar- ments, the dwellings, every kind of insignificant particular (insignificant for others or in other respects, but not for me at that moment), almost physically to approach my friends and my mistresses, of both of which I possess a fine circle or harem in history. But it remains evident that when I or others have the intention of writing history, true history and not poetical history, we shall clear away myths and idols, friends and mis- tresses, devoting our attention solely to the problem of history, which is spirit or value (or if less philosophical and more colloquial terms be preferred, culture, civiliza- tion, progress), and we shall look upon them with the two eyes and the single sight of thought. And when some one, in that sphere or at that altitude, begins to talk to us of the sentiments that but a short while ago were tumultuous in our breasts, we shall listen to him as to one who talks of things that are henceforth distant and dead, in which we no longer participate, because the only sentiment that now fills our soul is the sentiment of truth, the search for historical truth.
Ill Ill With poetical history — that is to say, with the falling back of history into a form ideally anterior, that of poetry — the cycle of erroneous forms of history (or of erroneous theoretical forms) is complete. But my dis- course would not perhaps be complete were I to remain silent as to a so-called form of history which had great importance in antiquity when it developed its own theory. It continues to have some importance in our own day, although now inclined to conceal its face, to change its garments, and to disguise itself. This is the history known in antiquity as oratory or rhetoric. Its object was to teach philosophy by example, to incite to virtuous conduct, to impart instruction as to the best political and military institutions, or simply to delight, according to the various intentions of the rhetoricians. And even in our own day this type of history is demanded and supplied not only in the elementary schools (where it seems to be understood that the bitter of wisdom .V 42 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY should be imbibed by youth mingled with the sweet of fable), but among grown men. It is closely linked up with politics, where it is a question of politics, or with religion, philosophy, morality, and the like, where they are concerned, or with diversions, as in the case of anecdotes, of strange events, of scandalous and terri- fying histories. But can this, I ask, be considered, I do not say history, but an erroneous (theoretical) form "of history? The structure of rhetorical history pre- supposes a history that already exists^ or at least a poetical history, narrated with a practical end. The end would be to induce an emotion leading to virtue, to remorse, to shame, or to enthusiasm; or perhaps to provide repose for the soul, such as is supplied by games; or to introduce into the mind a historical, philosophical, or scientific truth (movere, delectare, docere^ or in what- ever way it may be decided to classify these ends); but it will always be an end — that is to say, a practical act, which avails itself of the telling of the history as a means or as one of its means. Hence rhetorical history (which would be more correctly termed practicis- tical history) is composed of two elements, history and the practical end, converging into one, which is the practical act. For this reason one cannot attack it, but only its theory, which is the already mentioned theory, so celebrated in antiquity, of history as opus oratorium^ as <f>iko(TO(f)[a etc TrapaBecyfidrcov, as aTroSeiKTiicr), as vi/crjs yv/jbvao-fia (if warlike), or yvcbfirj? Traihevfxa (if political), or as evocative of 9780^, and the like. This doctrine is altogether analogous to the hedonistic and pedagogic doctrine relating to poetry which at that time domi- nated. It was believed possible to assign an end to poetry, whereas an extrinsic end was assigned to it, and poetry was thus passed over without being PSEUDO-HISTORIES 43 touched. Practicistical history (which, however, is not history) is exempt from censure as a practical act: each one of us is not content with inquiring into history, but also acts, and in acting can quite well avail himself of the re-evocation of this or that image, with a view to stimulating his own work, or (which comes to the same thing) the work of others. He can, indeed, read and re-read all the books that have from time to time been of assistance to him, as Cato the younger had recourse to reading the Fh<edo in order to prepare himself for suicide, while others have prepared themselves for it by reading Werther^ Ortis^ or the poems of Leopardi. From the time of the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, many others prepared themselves for conspiracies and tyran- nicides by reading Plutarch, and so much was this the case that one of them, the youthful Boscoli, when con- demned to death for a conspiracy against the Medici, remarked in his last hour to Delia Robbia (who recounts the incident), " Get Brutus out of my head! " — Brutus, not, that is to say, the history of Brutus that he had read and thought about, but that by which he had been fascinated and urged on to commit the crime. For the rest, true and proper history is not that Brutus which procreated the modern Bruti with their daggers, but Brutus as thought and situated in the world of thought.
One might be induced to assign a special place to the history now known as biased, because, on the one hand, it seems that it is not a simple history of sentiment and poetry, since it has an end to attain, and on the other because such end is not imposed upon it from with- out, but coincides with the conception of history itself. Hence it would seem fitting to look upon it as a form of history standing half-way between poetry and practicism, 44 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY a mixture of the two. But mixed forms and hybrid products exist only in the fictitious classifications of empiricists, never in the reality of the spirit, and biased history, when closely examined, is really either poetical history or practicistical history. An exception must always be made of the books in which the two moments are sometimes to be found side by side, as indeed one usually finds true history and chronicle and the document and philological and poetical history side by side. What gives the illusion of a mingling or of a special form of history is the fact that many take their point of departure from poetical inspiration (love of country, faith in their country, enthusiasm for a great man, and so on) and end with practical calculations: they begin with poetry and end with the allegations of the special pleader, and sometimes, although more rarely, they follow an opposite course. This duplication is to be observed in the numerous histories of parties that have been composed since the world was a world, and it is not difficult to discover in what parts of them we have manifestations of poetry and in what parts of calculation. Good taste and criticism are continually effecting this separation for history, as for art and poetry in general.
It is true that good taste loves and accepts poetry and discriminates between the practical intentions of the poet and those of the historian-poet; but those intentions are received and admitted by the moral conscience, provided always that they are good intentions and con- sequently good actions; and although people are dis- posed to speak ill of advocates in general, it is certain that the honest advocate and the prudent orator cannot be dispensed with in social life. Nor has so-called practicistical history ever been dispensed with, either V PSEUDO-HISTORIES 45 according to the Graeco-Roman practice, which was that of proposing portraits of statesmen, of captains, and of heroic women as models for the soul, or according to that of the Middle Ages, which was to repeat the lives of saints and hermits of the desert, or of knights strong of arm and of unshakable faith, or in our own modern world, which recommends as edifying and stimulating reading the lives and ' legends ' of inventors, of business men, of explorers, and of millionaires. Educative \f histories, composed with the view of promoting definite practical or moral dispositions, really exist, and every Italian knows how great were the effects of Colletta's and Balbo's histories and the like during the period of the Risorgimento, and everyone knows books that have * inspired ' him or inculcated in him the love of his own country, of his town and steeple.
This moral efficacy, which belongs to morality and not to history, has had so strong a hold upon the mind that the prejudice still survives of assigning a moral function to history (as also to poetry) in the field of teaching. This prejudice is still to be found inspiring even Labriola's pedagogic essay on The Teaching of History. But if we mean by the word * history ' both history that is thought as well as that which, on the contrary, is poetry, philology, or moral will, it is clear that ' history ' will enter the educational process not under one form alone, but under all these forms. But as history proper it will only enter it under one of them, which is not that of moral education, exclusively or abstractly considered, but of the education or develop- ment of thought.
46 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IV Much is said, now even more than formerly, of the necessity of a * reform of history,' but to me there does not seem to be anything to reform. Nothing to reform in the sense attributed to such a demand — namely, tha t of moulding a new form of history or of creating for the first time true history. History is, has been, and always will be the same, what we have called living history, history that is (ideally) contemporary; and chronicle, philological history, poetical history, and (let us call it history nevertheless) practicistical history are, have been, and always will be the same. Those who undertake the task of creating a new history always succeed in setting up philological history against poetical history, or poetical history against philological history, or contem- porary history against both of them, and so on. Unless, indeed, as is the case with Buckle and the many tiresome sociologists and positivists of the last ten years, they lament with great pomposity and no less lack of intelli- gence as to what history is that it lacks the capacity of observation and of experiment (that is to say, the natural- istic abstraction of observation and experiment), boast- ing that they * reduce history to natural science* — that is to say, by the employment of a circle, as vicious as it is grotesque, to a mental form which is its pale derivative.
In another sense, everything is certainly to be reformed in history, and history is at every moment labouring to render herself perfect — that is to say, is enriching herself and probing more deeply into herself. There is no history that completely satisfies us, because any con- struction of ours generates new facts and new problems and solicits new solutions. Thus the history of Rome, of Greece, and of Christianity, of the Reformation, of PSEUDO-HISTORIES 47 the French Revolution, of philosophy, of literature, and of any other subject is always being told afresh and always differently. But history reforms herself, remain- ing herself always, and the strength of her development lies precisely in thus enduring.
The demand for radical or abstract reform also cannot be given that other meaning of a reform of the * idea of history,' of the discovery that is to be made or is finally made of the true concept of history. At all periods the distinction has to some extent been made between histories that are histories and those others that are works of imagination or chronicles. This could be demonstrated from the observations met with at all times among historians and methodologists, and from the confessions that even the most confused of them involuntarily let fall. It is also to be inferred with certainty from the nature itself of the human spirit, although the words in which those distinctions are ex- pressed have not been written or are not preserved. And such a concept and distinction are renewed at every moment by history itself, which becomes ever more copious, more profound. This is to be looked upon as certain, and is for that matter made evident by the history of historiography, which has certainly accomplished some progress since the days of Diogenes of Halicarnassus and of Cicero to those of Hegel and of Humboldt. Other problems have been formed in our own day, some of which I attempt to solve in this book. I am well aware that it affords solutions only to some among the many, and especially that it does not solve (simply because it cannot) those that are not I yet formed, but which will inevitably be formed in the future. In any case it will be thought that the clearness 48 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY acquired by the historical consciousness as to the nature of its own work will at least avail to destroy the erroneous forms of history, that since we have shown that philological history or chronicle is not history, and that poetical history is poetry and not history, the ' facts ' that correspond to those beliefs must disappear, or become ever more limited in extension, to the point of disappearing altogether in a near or distant future, as catapults have disappeared before guns and as we see carriages disappearing before automobiles.
And this would be truly possible were these erroneous forms to become concrete in ' facts,' were they not, as I have said above, mere * claims.' If error and evil were \ a fact, humanity would have long ago abolished it — that is to say, superseded it, in the same way as it has superseded slavery and serfdom and the method of simple barter and so many other things that were facts, that is to say, its own transitory forms. But error (and evil, which is one with it) is not a fact; it does not possess empirical existence; it is nothing but the negative or dialectical moment of the spirit, necessary for the concreteness of the positive moment, for the reality of the spirit. For this reason it is eternal and indestructible, and to destroy it by abstraction (since it cannot be done by thought) is equivalent to imagining the death of the spirit, as confirmed in the saying that abstraction is death.
And without occupying further space with the ex- position of a doctrine that would entail too wide a digression,1 I shall observe that a glance at the history of history proves the salutary nature of error, which is not a Caliban, but rather an Ariel, who breathes everywhere, calling forth and exciting, but can never be grasped as a 1 See Logic as Science of Pure Concept. — D. A.
PSEUDO-HISTORIES 49 solid thing. And with a view to seeking examples only in those general forms that have been hitherto examined, polemical and tendencious historiography is certainly to be termed error. This prevailed during the period of the enlightenment, and reduced history to a pleading against priests and tyrants. But who would have wished simply to return from this to the learned and & apathetic history of the Benedictines and of the other x authors of folios? The polemic and its direction expressed the need for living history, though not in an is altogether satisfactory form, and this need was followed 2 by the creation of a new historiography during the re period of romanticism. The type of merely philological - history, promulgated in Germany after 1820, and afteras ward disseminated throughout Europe, was also cer- 0: tainly error; but it was likewise an instrument of ts, liberation from the more or less fantastic and arbitrary n: histories improvised by the philosophers. But who lot would wish to turn back from them to the " philosophies ivc of history '? The type of history, sometimes tenden-