namely, that the Idea turns the illusions of the individual to its own ends, even though this doctrine lead inevit- ably to a sort of transcendency of the Idea?
104 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY But the real truth is that what results from the obser- vations and objections above exposed is not the illusion of the individual who loves, who tries to complete his work, who sighs for peace, but rather the illusion of him who believes that the individual is illuded: the illusory is the illusion itself. And this illusion appears in the phenomenology of the spirit as the result of the well-known abstractive process, which breaks up unity in an arbitrary manner and in this case separates the re- sult from the process or actual acting, in which alone the former is real; the accompaniment from the accom- panied, which is all one with the accompaniment, because there is not spirit and its escort, but only the one spirit in its development, the single moments of the process, of the continuity, which is their soul; and so on. That illusion arises in the individual when he begins to reflect upon himself, and at the beginning of that reflection, which is at the same time a dialectical process. But in concrete reflection, or rather in con- crete consciousness, he discovers that there is no end that has not been realized, as well as it could, in the process, in which it was never an absolute end — that is to say, an abstract end, but both a means and an end.
To return to the popular theory of Schopenhauer, only he who looks upon men as animals, or worse than animals, can believe that love is a process that leads only to the biological propagation of the species, when every man knows that he fecundates his own soul above all prior to the marriage couch, and that images and thoughts and projects and actions are created before chil- dren and in addition to them. Certainly, we are conscious of the moments of an action as it develops — that is to say, of its passage and not of its totality seen in the light of a new spiritual situation, such as we strive to obtain THE HUMANITY OF HISTORY 105 when, as we say, we leave the tumult behind us and set ourselves to write our own history. But there is no illusion, either now or then; neither now nor then is there the abstract individual face to face with a Provi- dence who succeeds in deceiving him for beneficial ends, acting rather as a doctor than as a serious educator, and treating the race of men as though they were animals to train and make use of, instead of men to educate — that is to say, develop.
After having concentrated the mind upon a thought of Vico and of Hegel, can it be possible to set ourselves down to examine those of others which afford material to the controversies of historians and methodologists of history of our time? These represent the usual form in which appear the problems concerning the re- lation between the individual and the Idea, between pragmatic and idealistic history. Perhaps the patience necessary for the descent into low haunts is meritorious and our duty; perhaps there may be some useful con- clusion to be drawn from these common disputes; but I must beg to be excused for not taking part in them and for limiting myself to the sole remark that the question which has been for some time discussed, whether history be the history of ' masses ' or of * individuals,' would be laughable in its very enunciation, if we were to under- stand by * mass ' what the word implies, a complex of individuals. And since it is not a good method to attri- bute laughable ideas to adversaries, it may be supposed that on this occasion what is meant by ' mass ' is some- thing else, which moves the mass of individuals. In this case, anyone can see that the problem is the same as that which has just been examined. The conflict between ' collectivistic ' and * individualistic ' historio- graphy will never be composed so long as the former 106 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY assigns to collectivity the power that is creative of ideas and institutions, and the latter assigns it to the individual of genius, for both affirmations are true in what they include and false in what they exclude — that is to say, not only in their exclusion of the opposed thesis, but also in the tacit exclusion, which they both make, of totality as idea.
A warning as to a historiographical method, so similar in appearance to that which I have been defending as to be confounded with it, may perhaps be more opportune. This method, which is variously called sociological^ institutional, and of values, preserves among the variety of its content and the inequality of mental level noticeable in its supporters the general and con- stant characteristic of believing that true history consists of the history of societies, institutions, and human values, not of individual values. The history of in- dividuals, according to this view, is excluded, as being a parallel or inferior history, and its inferiority is held to be due either to the slight degree of interest that it is capable of arousing or to its lack of intelligibility. In the latter case (by an inversion on this occasion of the attitude of contempt which was noted in pragmatic history) it is handed over to chronicle or romance. But in such dualism as this, and in the disagreement which persists owing to that dualism, lies the profound difference between the empirical and naturalistic con- ceptions of value, of institutions, and of societies, and the idealistic conception. This conception does not contemplate the establishment of an abstract history of the spirit, of the abstract universal, side by side with or beyond abstract individualistic or pragmatic history; but the understanding that individual and idea, taken separately, are two equivalent abstractions, each equally THE HUMANITY OF HISTORY 107 unfitted for supplying its subject to history, and that true history is the history of the individual in so far as he is universal and of the universal in so far as individual. It is not a question of abolishing Pericles to the advantage of politics, or Plato to the advantage of philosophy, or Sophocles to the advantage of tragedy; but to think and to represent politics, philosophy, and tragedy as Pericles, Plato, and Sophocles, and these as each one of the others in one of their particular moments. Because if each one of these is the shadow of a dream outside its relation with the spirit, so likewise is the spirit outside its individualizations, and to attain to universality in the conception of history is to render both equally secure with that security which they mutually confer upon one another. Were the existence of Pericles, of Sophocles, and of Plato indifferent, would not the existence of the idea have for that very reason been pronounced indif- ferent? Let him who cuts individuals out of history but pay close attention and he will perceive that either he has not cut them out at all, as he imagined, or he has cut out with them history itself.
VII CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION i SINCE a fact is historical in so far as it is thought, j and since nothing exists outside thought, there j can be no sense whatever in the question, What are historical facts and what are non-historical facts? A non-historical fact would be a fact that has not been thought and would therefore be non-existent, and so far no one has yet met with a non-existent fact. A! historical thought links itself to and follows another historical thought, and then another, and yet another; and however far we navigate the great sea of being, we jj never leave the well-defined sea of thought.
But it remains to be explained how the illusion is formed that there are two orders of facts, historical and non-historical. The explanation is easy when we recollect what has been said as to the chroniclizing of history which dies as history, leaving behind it the mute traces of its life, and also as to the function of erudition or philology, which preserves these traces for the ends of culture, arranging scattered items of news, documents, and monuments in an orderly manner. News, documents, and monuments are innumerable, and to collect them all would not only be impossible, but contrary to the ends themselves of culture, which, though aided in its work by the moderate and even copious supply of such things, would be hindered and suffocated by their exuberance, not to say infinity. We consequently observe that the annotator of news transcribes some items and omits the rest; the collector CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION 109 of papers arranges and ties up in a bundle a certain number of them, tearing up or burning or sending to the dealer in such things a very large quantity, which forms the majority; the collector of antiques places some objects in glass cases, others in temporary safe custody, others he resolutely destroys or allows to be destroyed; if he does otherwise, he is not an intelligent collector, but a maniacal amasser, well fitted to provide (as he has provided) the comic type of the antiquarian for fiction and comedy. For this reason, not only are papers jealously collected and preserved in public archives, and lists made of them, but efforts are also made to discard those that are useless. It is for this reason that in the recensions of philologists we always hear the same song in praise of the learned man who has made a * sober ' use of documents, of blame for him who has followed a different method and included what is vain and superfluous in his volumes of annals, of selec- tions from archives, or of collections of documents. All learned men and philologists, in fact, select, and all are advised to select. And what is the logical criterion of this selection? There is none: no logical criterion can be named that shall determine what news or what documents are or are not useful and important, just because we are here occupied with a practical and not with a scientific problem. Indeed, this lack of a logical criterion is the foundation of the sophism that tyrannizes over maniacal collectors, who reasonably affirm that everything can be of use, and would therefore unreason- ably preserve everything — they wear themselves out in accumulating old clothes and odds and ends of all sorts, over which they mount guard with jealous affection. The criterion is the choice itself, conditioned, like every economic act, by knowledge of the actual situation, and no THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY in this case by the practical and scientific needs of a definite moment or epoch. This selection is certainly conducted with intelligence, but not with the application of a philosophic criterion, and is justified only in and by itself. For this reason we speak of the fine tact, or scent, or instinct of the collector or learned man Such a process of selection may quite well make use of I apparent logical distinctions, as those between public and private facts, capital and secondary documents, beautiful or ugly, significant or insignificant monuments; but in final analysis the decision is always given from practical motives, and is summed up in the act of pre- serving or neglecting. Now from this preserving or neglecting, in which our action is realized, is afterward invented an objective quality, attributed to facts, which leads to their being spoken of as * facts that are worthy j and ' facts that are not worthy of history,' of ' historical I and * non-historical ' facts. But all this is an affair of imagination, of vocabulary, and of rhetoric, which in no way changes the substance of things.
When history is confounded with erudition and the methods of the one are unduly transferred to the other, and when the metaphorical distinction that has just been noted is taken in a literal sense, we are asked how it is possible to avoid going astray in the infinity of facts, and with what criterion it is possible to effect the separation of * historical ' facts from ' those that are not worthy of history.' But there is no fear of going astray in history, because, as we have seen, the problem is in every case prepared by life, and in every case the problem is solved by thought, which passes from the confusion of life to the distinctness of con- sciousness; a given problem with a given solution: a problem that generates other problems, but is never i CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION in a problem of choice between two or more facts, but on each occasion a creation of the unique fact, the fact thought. Choice does not appear in it, any more than in art, which passes from the obscurity of sentiment to the clearness of the representation, and is never embar- rassed between the images to be chosen, because itself feates the image, the unity of the image. By thus confounding two things, not only is an insoluble problem created, but the very distinction between facts that can and facts that cannot be neglected is also denaturalized and rendered void. This dis- tinction is quite valid as regards erudition, for facts that can be neglected are always facts — that is to say, they are traces of facts, in the form of news, documents, and monuments, and for this reason one can understand how they can be looked upon as a class to be placed side by side with the other class of facts that cannot be neglected. But non-historical facts — that is to say, facts that have not been thought — would be nothing, and when placed beside historical facts — that is to say, thought as a species of the same genus — they would communicate their nullity to those also, and would dis- solve their own distinctness, together with the concept of history.
After this, it does not seem necessary to examine the characteristics that have been proposed as the basis for this division of facts into historical and non-historical. The assumption being false, the manner in which it is treated in its particulars remains indifferent and without importance in respect to the fundamental criticism of the division itself. It may happen (and this is usually the case) that the characteristics and the differences enunciated have some truth in themselves, or at least Dffer some problem for solution: for example, when by ii2 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY historical facts are meant general facts and by non- i historical facts those that are individual. Here we find the problem of the relation of the individual and the universal. Or, again, by historical facts are sometimes meant those that treat of history proper, and by non- 1 historical the stray references of chronicles, and here; we find the problem as to the relation between history j and chronicle. But regarded as an attempt to decide j logically of what facts history should treat and whatj neglect, and to assign to each its quality, such divisions I are all equally erroneous.
The periodization of history is subject to the samej criticism. To think history is certainly to divide it into\ periods^ because thought is organism, dialectic, drama, and as such has its periods, its beginning, its middle, and its end, and all the other ideal pauses that a drama! implies and demands. But those pauses are ideal and! therefore inseparable from thought, with which they are one, as the shadow is one with the body, silence withj sound: they are identical and changeable with it. | Christian thinkers divided history into that which pre-j ceded and that which followed the redemption, and! this periodization was not an addition to Christian! thought, but Christian thought itself. We modern; Europeans divide it into antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. This periodization has been subject I to a great deal of refined criticism on the part of those who hold that it came to be introduced anyhow, almost dishonestly, without the authority of great names, and without the advice of the philosophers and the method- j ologists being asked on the matter. But it has main- tained itself and will maintain itself so long as our consciousness shall persist in its present phase. The fact of its having been insensibly formed would appear CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION 113 be rather a merit than a demerit, because this means at it was not due to the caprice of an individual, but as followed the development of modern consciousness itself. When antiquity has nothing more to tell us who still feel the need of studying Greek and Latin, Kreek philosophy and Roman law; when the Middle ges have been superseded (and they have not been iperseded yet); when a new social form, different from that which emerged from the ruins of the Middle Ages, has supplanted our own; then the problem itself and the historical outlook which derives from it will also be changed, and perhaps antiquity and the Middle Ages and modern times will all be contained within a single epoch, and the pauses be otherwise distributed. And what has been said of these great periods is to be : understood of all the others, which vary according to the variety of historical material and the various modes e of viewing it. It has sometimes been said that every r periodization has a * relative ' value. But we must say ' both relative and absolute,' like all thought, it being understood that the periodization is intrinsic to thought and determined by the determination of thought.
However, the practical needs of chroniclism and of learning make themselves felt here also. Just as in metrical treatises the internal rhythm of a poem is re- : solved into external rhythm and divided into syllables and feet, into long and short vowels, tonic and rhythmic accents, into strophes and series of strophes, and so on, so the internal time of historical thought (that time which is thought itself) is derived from chroni- clism converted into external time, or temporal series, of which the elements are spatially separated from one fl another. Scheme and facts are no longer one, but...two, and the facts are disposed according to the scheme, n4 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY and divided according to the scheme into major and minor cycles (for example, according to hours, days, months, years, centuries, and millenniums, where the calculation is based upon the rotations and revolutions of the earth upon itself and round the sun). Such is chronology ', by means of which we know that the histories of Sparta, Athens, and Rome filled the thousand years preceding Christ, that of the Lombards, the Visigoths, and the Franks the first millennium after Christ, and that we are still in the second millennium. This mode of chronology can be pursued by means of particularizing incidents thus: that the Empire of the West ended in a.d. 476 (although it did not really end then or had already ended previously); that Charlemagne the Frank was crowned Emperor at Rome by Pope Leo III in the year 800; that America was discovered in 1492, and that the Thirty Years War ended in 1648. It is of the greatest use to us to know these things, or (since we really know nothing in this way) to acquire the capacity of so checking references to facts that we are able to find them easily and promptly when occasion arises. Certainly no one thinks of speaking ill of chronologies and chronographies and tables and synoptic views of history, although in using them we run the risk (and in what thing done by man does he not run a risk?) of seeing worthy folk impressed with the belief that the number produces the event, as the hand of the clock, when it touches the sign of the hour, makes the clock strike; or (as an old professor of mine used to say) that the curtain fell upon the acting of ancient history in 476, to rise again immediately afterward on the beginning of the Middle Ages.
But such fancies are not limited to the minds of the CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION 115 ingenuous and inattentive; they constitute the base of that error owing to which a distinction of periods, which shall be what is called objective and natural^ is desired and sought after. Christian chronographers had already introduced this ontological meaning into chrono- logy, making the millenniums of the world's history correspond with the days of the creation or the ages of man's life. Finally, Ferrari in Italy and Lorenz in Germany (the latter ignorant of his Italian predecessor) conceived a theory of historical periods according to generations, calculated in periods of thirty-one years and a fraction, or of thirty-three years and a fraction, and grouped as tetrads or triads, in periods of a hundred and twenty-five years or a century. But, without dwelling upon numerical and chronographic schemes, all doctrines that represent the history of nations as proceeding according to the stages of development of the individual, of his psychological de- velopment, of the categories of the spirit, or of anything else, are due to the same error, which is that of rendering periodization external and natural. All are mythological, if taken in the naturalistic sense, save when these designations are employed empirically — that is to say, when chronology is used in chroniclism and erudition in a legitimate manner. We must also repeat a warning as to the care to be employed in recognizing important problems, which sometimes have first appeared through the medium of those erroneous inquiries, and as to the truths that have been seen or caught a glimpse of by these means. This exempts us (as we remarked above in relation to the criteria of choice) from examining those doctrines in the particularity of their various de- terminations, because in this respect, if their assumption be obviously fantastic, their value is consequently nil n6 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Nil, as the value of all those aesthetic constructions is nil which claim to pass from the abstractions, by means of which they reduce the organism of the work of art to fragments for practical ends, to the explanation of the nature of art and to the judgment and history of the creations of human imagination.
VIII DISTINCTION (SPECIAL HISTORIES) AND DIVISION THE conception of history that we have reached — namely, that which has not its documents out- side itself, but in itself, which has not its final and causal explanation outside itself, but within itself, which has not philosophy outside itself, but coincides with philosophy, which has not the reason for its definite form and rhythm outside itself, but within itself — identifies history with the act of thought itself, which is always philosophy and history together. And with this it debarrasses it of the props and plasters applied to it as though to an invalid in need of external assistance. For they really did produce an infirmity through their very insistence in first imagining and then treating a non-existent infirmity.
Doubtless the autonomy thus attained is a great advantage; but at first sight it is not free from a grave objection. When all the fallacious distinctions formerly believed in have been cancelled, it seems that nothing remains for history as an act of thought but the imme- diate consciousness of the individual-universal, in which all distinctions are submerged and lost. And this is mysticism, which is admirably adapted for feeling one- self at unity with God, but is not adapted for thinking the world nor for acting in the world.
Nor does it seem useful to add that unity with God does not exclude consciousness of diversity, of change, of becoming. For it can be objected that consciousness u8 THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY of diversity either derives from the individual and intuitive element, and in this case it is incomprehensible how such an element can subsist in its proper form of intuition, in thought, which always universalizes; or if it is said to be the result of the act of thought itself, then the distinction, believed to have been abolished, reappears in a strengthened form, and the asserted indistinct simplicity of thought remains shaken. A mysticism which should insist upon particularity and diversity, a historical mysticism, in fact, would be a con- tradiction in terms, for mysticism is unhistorical and anti-historical by its very nature.