Introduction to the Study of History Part 13

(1) We shall ask ourselves what are the blanks left by the doc.u.ments. By working through the scheme used for the grouping of facts it is easy to discover what are the cla.s.ses of facts on which we lack information. In the case of evolution, we notice which links are missing in the chain of successive modifications; in the case of events, what episodes, what groups of actors are still unknown to us; what facts enter or disappear from the field of our knowledge without our being able to trace their beginning or end. We ought to construct, mentally at any rate, a tabulated scheme of the points on which we are ignorant, in order to keep before our minds the distance separating the knowledge we have from a perfect knowledge.

(2) The value of our knowledge depends on the value of our doc.u.ments.

Criticism has given us indications on this point in each separate case, these indications, so far as relating to a given body of facts, must be summarised under a few heads. Does our knowledge come originally from direct observation, from written tradition, or from oral tradition? Do we possess several traditions of different bias, or a single tradition?

Do we possess doc.u.ments of different cla.s.ses or of one single cla.s.s? Is our information vague or precise, detailed or summary, literary or positive, official or confidential?

The natural tendency is to forget, in construction, the results yielded by criticism, to forget the incompleteness of our knowledge and the elements of doubt in it. An eager desire to increase to the greatest possible extent the amount of our information and the number of our conclusions impels us to seek emanc.i.p.ation from all negative restrictions. We thus run a great risk of using fragmentary and suspicious sources of information for the purpose of forming general impressions, just as if we were in possession of a complete record. It is easy to forget the existence of those facts which the doc.u.ments do not describe (economic facts, slaves in antiquity), it is easy to exaggerate the s.p.a.ce occupied by facts which are known to us (Greek art, Roman inscriptions, mediaeval monasteries). We instinctively estimate the importance of facts by the number of the doc.u.ments which mention them.

We forget the peculiar character of the doc.u.ments, and, when they all have a common origin, we forget that they have all subjected the facts to the same distortions, and that their community of origin renders verification impossible; we submissively reproduce the bias of the tradition (Roman, orthodox, aristocratic).

In order to resist these natural tendencies, it is enough to pa.s.s in review the whole body of facts and the whole body of tradition, before attempting to draw any general conclusion.

VII. Descriptive formulae give the particular character of each small group of facts. In order to obtain a general conclusion, we must combine these detailed results into a general formula. We must not compare together isolated details or secondary characteristics,[208] but groups of facts which resemble each other in a whole set of characteristics.

We thus form an aggregate (of inst.i.tutions, of groups of men, of events). Following the method indicated above, we determine its distinguishing characteristics, its extent, its duration, its quant.i.ty or importance.

As we form groups of greater and greater generality we drop, with each new degree of generality, those characteristics which vary, and retain those which are common to all the members of the new group. We must stop at the point where nothing is left except the characteristics common to the whole of humanity. The result is the condensation into a single formula of the general character of an order of facts, of a language, a religion, an art, an economic organisation, a society, a government, a complex event (such as the Invasion or the Reformation).

As long as these comprehensive formulae remain isolated the conclusion is incomplete. And as it is no longer possible to fuse them into higher generalisations, we feel the need of comparing them for the purpose of cla.s.sification. This cla.s.sification may be attempted by two methods.

(1) We may compare together similar categories of special facts, language, religions, arts, governments, taking them from the whole of humanity, and cla.s.sifying together those which most resemble each other.

We obtain families of languages, religions, and governments, which we may again cla.s.sify and arrange among themselves. This is an abstract kind of cla.s.sification; it isolates one species of facts from all the others, and thus renounces all claim to exhibit causes. It has the advantage of being rapidly performed and of yielding a technical vocabulary which is useful for designating facts.

(2) We may compare real groups of real individuals, we may take societies which figure in history and cla.s.sify them according to their similarities. This is a concrete cla.s.sification a.n.a.logous to that of zoology, in which, not functions, but whole animals are cla.s.sified. It is true that the groups are less clearly marked than in zoology; nor is there a general agreement as to the characteristics in respect of which we are to look for resemblances. Are we to choose the economic or the political organisation of the groups, or their intellectual condition?

No principle of choice has as yet become obligatory.

History has not yet succeeded in establishing a scientific system of comprehensive cla.s.sification. Possibly human groups are not sufficiently h.o.m.ogeneous to furnish a solid basis of comparison, and not sharply enough divided to be treated as comparable units.

VIII. The study of the relations between simultaneous facts consists in a search for the connections between all the facts of different species which occur in a given society. We have a vague consciousness that the different habits which are separated by abstraction and ranged under different categories (art, religion, political inst.i.tutions), are not isolated in reality, that they have common characteristics, and that they are closely enough connected for a change in one of them to bring about a change in another. This is a fundamental idea of the _Esprit des Lois_ of Montesquieu. This bond of connection, sometimes called _consensus_, has received the name of _Zusammenhang_ from the German school. From this conception has arisen the theory of the _Volksgeist_ (the mind of a people), a counterfeit of which has within the last few years been introduced into France under the name of "ame nationale."

This conception is also at the bottom of the theory regarding the soul of society which Lamprecht has expounded.

After the rejection of these mystical conceptions there remains a vague but incontrovertible fact, the "solidarity" which exists between the different habits of one and the same people. In order to study it with precision it would be necessary to a.n.a.lyse it, and a connecting bond cannot be a.n.a.lysed. It is thus quite natural that this part of social science should have remained a refuge for mystery and obscurity.

By the comparison of different societies which resemble or differ from each other in a given department (religion or government), with the object of discovering in what other departments they resemble or differ from each other, it is possible that interesting empirical results might be obtained. But, in order to _explain_ the _consensus_, it is necessary to work back to the facts which have produced it, the common causes of the various habits. We are thus obliged to undertake the investigation of causes, and we enter the province of what is called _philosophical_ history, because it investigates what was formerly called the _philosophy_ of facts--that is to say, their permanent relations.

IX. The necessity of rising above the simple determination of facts in order to _explain_ them by their _causes_, a necessity which has governed the development of all the sciences, has at length been felt even in the study of history. Hence have arisen systematic philosophies of history, and attempts to discover historical laws and causes. We cannot here enter into a critical examination of these attempts, which the nineteenth century has produced in so great number; we shall merely indicate what are the ways in which the problem has been attacked, and what obstacles have prevented a scientific solution from being reached.

The most natural method of explanation consists in the a.s.sumption that a transcendental cause, Providence, guides the whole course of events towards an end which is known to G.o.d.[209] This explanation can be but a metaphysical doctrine, crowning the work of science; for the distinguishing feature of science is that it only studies efficient causes. The historian is not called upon to investigate the first cause or final causes any more than the chemist or the naturalist. And, in fact, few writers on history nowadays stop to discuss the theory of Providence in its theological form.

But the tendency to explain historical facts by transcendental causes survives in more modern theories in which metaphysic is disguised under scientific forms. The historians of the nineteenth century have been so strongly influenced by their philosophical education that most of them, sometimes unconsciously, introduce metaphysical formulae into the construction of history. It will be enough to enumerate these systems, and point out their metaphysical character, so that reflecting historians may be warned to distrust them.

The theory of the rational character of history rests on the notion that every real historical fact is at the same time "rational"--that is, in conformity with an intelligible comprehensive plan; ordinarily it is tacitly a.s.sumed that every social fact has its _raison d'etre_ in the development of society--that is, that it ends by turning to the advantage of society; hence the cause of every inst.i.tution is sought for in the social need it was originally meant to supply.[210] This is the fundamental idea of Hegelianism, if not with Hegel, at least with the historians who have been his disciples (Ranke, Mommsen, Droysen, in France Cousin, Taine, and Michelet). This is a lay disguise of the old theological theory of final causes which a.s.sumes the existence of a Providence occupied in guiding humanity in the direction of its interests. This is a consoling, but not a scientific _a priori_ hypothesis; for the observation of historical facts does not indicate that things have always happened in the most rational way, or in the way most advantageous to men, nor that inst.i.tutions have had any other cause than the interest of those who established them; the facts, indeed, point rather to the opposite conclusion.

From the same metaphysical source has also sprung the Hegelian theory of the _ideas_ which are successively realised in history through the medium of successive peoples. This theory, which has been popularised in France by Cousin and Michelet, has had its day, even in Germany, but it has been revived, especially in Germany, in the form of the historical mission (_Beruf_) which is attributed to peoples and persons. It will here be enough to observe that the very metaphors of "idea" and "mission" imply a transcendental anthropomorphic cause.

From the same optimistic conception of a rational guidance of the world is derived the theory of the continuous and necessary _progress_ of humanity. Although it has been adopted by the positivists, this is merely a metaphysical hypothesis. In the ordinary sense of the word, "progress" is merely a subjective expression denoting those changes which follow the direction of our preferences. But, even taking the word in the objective sense given to it by Spencer (an increase in the variety and coordination of social phenomena), the study of historical facts does not point to a _single_ universal and continuous progress of humanity, it brings before us a _number_ of partial and intermittent progressive movements, and it gives us no reason to attribute them to a permanent cause inherent in humanity as a whole rather than to a series of local accidents.[211]

Attempts at a more scientific form of explanation have had their origin in the special branches of history (of languages, religion, law). By the separate study of the succession of facts of a single species, specialists have been enabled to ascertain the regular recurrence of the same successions of facts, and these results have been expressed in formulae which are sometimes called laws (for example, the law of the tonic accent); these are never more than empirical laws which merely indicate successions of facts without explaining them, for they do not reveal the efficient cause. But specialists, influenced by a natural metaphor, and struck by the regularity of these successions, have regarded the evolution of usages (of a word, a rite, a dogma, a rule of law), as if it were an organic development a.n.a.logous to the growth of a plant; we hear of the "life of words," of the "death of dogmas," of the "growth of myths." Then, in forgetfulness of the fact that all these things are pure abstractions, it has been tacitly a.s.sumed that there is a force inhering in the word, the rite, the rule, which produces its evolution. This is the theory of the development (_Entwickelung_) of usages and inst.i.tutions; it was started in Germany by the "historical"

school, and has dominated all the special branches of history. The history of languages alone has succeeded in shaking off its influence.[212] Just as usages have been treated as if they were existences possessing a separate life of their own, so the succession of individuals composing the various bodies within a society (royalty, church, senate, parliament) has been personified by the attribution to it of a will, which is treated as an active cause. A world of imaginary beings has thus been created behind the historical facts, and has replaced Providence in the explanation of them. For our defence against this deceptive mythology a single rule will suffice: Never seek the causes of an historical fact without having first expressed it concretely in terms of acting and thinking individuals. If abstractions are used, every metaphor must be avoided which would make them play the part of living beings.

By a comparison of the evolutions of the different species of facts which coexist in one and the same society, the "historical" school was led to the discovery of solidarity (_Zusammenhang_).[213] But, before attempting to discover its causes by a.n.a.lysis, the adherents of this school a.s.sumed the existence of a permanent general cause residing in the society itself. And, as it was customary to personify society, a special temperament was attributed to it, the peculiar genius of the nation or the race, manifesting itself in the different social activities and explaining their solidarity.[214] This was simply an hypothesis suggested by the animal world, in which each species has permanent characteristics. It would have been inadequate, for in order to explain how a given society comes to change its character from one epoch to another (the Greeks between the seventh and the fourth centuries, the English between the fifteenth and the nineteenth), it would have been necessary to invoke the aid of external causes. And the theory is untenable, for all the societies known to history are groups of men without anthropological unity and without common hereditary characteristics.

In addition to these metaphysical or metaphorical explanations, attempts have been made to apply to the investigation of causes in history the cla.s.sical procedure of the natural sciences: the comparison of parallel series of successive phenomena in order to discover those which always appear together. The "comparative method" has a.s.sumed several different forms. Sometimes the subject of study has been a detail of social life (a usage, an inst.i.tution, a belief, a rule), defined in abstract terms; its evolutions in different societies have been compared with a view to determine the common evolution which is to be attributed to one and the same general cause. Thus have arisen comparative philology, mythology, and law. It has been proposed (in England) to give precision to the comparative method by applying "statistics"; this would mean the systematic comparison of all known societies and the enumeration of all the cases where two usages are found together. This is the principle of Bacon's tables of agreement; it is to be feared that it will be no more fertile in results. The defect of all such methods is that they apply to abstract and partly arbitrary notions, sometimes merely to verbal resemblances, and do not rest on a knowledge of the whole of the conditions under which the facts occur.

We can conceive a more concrete method which, instead of comparing fragments, should compare wholes, that is entire societies, either the same society at different stages of its evolution (England in the sixteenth, and again in the nineteenth century), or else the general evolution of several societies, contemporary with each other (England and France), or existing at different epochs (Rome and England). Such a method might be useful negatively, for the purpose of ascertaining that a given fact is not the necessary effect of another, since they are not always found together (for example, the emanc.i.p.ation of women and Christianity). But positive results are hardly to be expected of it, for the concomitance of two facts in several series does not show whether one is the cause of the other, or whether both are joint effects of a single cause.

The methodical investigation of the causes of a fact requires an a.n.a.lysis of the conditions under which the fact occurs, performed so as to isolate the necessary condition which is its cause; it presupposes, therefore, the complete knowledge of these conditions. But this is precisely what we never have in history. We must therefore renounce the idea of arriving at causes by direct methods such as are used in the other sciences.

As a matter of fact, however, historians often do employ the notion of cause, which, as we have shown above, is indispensable for the purpose of formulating events and constructing periods. They know causes partly from the authors of doc.u.ments who observed the facts, partly from the a.n.a.logy of the causes which we all observe at the present day. The whole history of events is a chain of obviously and incontrovertibly connected incidents, each one of which is the determining cause of another. The lance-thrust of Montgomery is the cause of the death of Henry II.; this death is the cause of the accession to power of the Guises, which again is the cause of the rising of the Protestants.

The observation of causes by the authors of doc.u.ments is limited to the interconnection of the accidental facts observed by them; these are, in truth, the causes which are known with the greatest certainty. Thus history, unlike the other sciences, is better able to ascertain the causes of particular incidents than those of general transformations, for the work is found already done in the doc.u.ments.

In the investigation of the causes of general facts, historical construction is reduced to the a.n.a.logy between the past and the present.

Whatever chance there is of finding the causes which explain the evolution of past societies must lie in the direct observation of the transformations of present societies.

This is a branch of study which is not yet firmly established; here we can only state the principles of it.

(1) In order to ascertain the causes of the solidarity between the different habits of one and the same society, it is necessary to look beyond the abstract and conventional form which the facts a.s.sume in language (dogma, rule, rite, inst.i.tution), and attend to the real concrete centres, which are always thinking and acting men. Here only are found together the different species of activity which language separates by abstraction. Their solidarity is to be sought for in some dominating feature in the character or the environment of the men which influences all the different manifestations of their activity. We must not expect the same degrees of solidarity in all the species of activity; there will be most of it in those species where each individual is in close dependence on the actions of the ma.s.s (economic, social, political life); there will be less of it in the intellectual activities (arts, sciences), where individual initiative has freer play.[215] Doc.u.ments mention most habits (beliefs, customs, inst.i.tutions) in the lump, without distinguishing individuals; and yet, in one and the same society, habits vary considerably from one man to another. It is necessary to take account of these differences, otherwise there is a danger of explaining the actions of artists and men of science by the beliefs and the habits of their prince or their tradesmen.

(2) In order to ascertain the causes of an evolution, it is necessary to study the only beings which can evolve--men. Every evolution has for its cause a change in the material conditions or in the habits of certain men. Observation shows us two kinds of change. In the one case, the men remain the same, but change their manner of acting or thinking, either voluntarily through imitation, or by compulsion. In the other, the men who practised the old usage disappear and are replaced by others who do not practise it; these may be strangers, or they may be the descendants of the first set of men, but educated in a different manner. This renewing of the generations seems, in our day, to be the most active cause of evolution. It is natural to suppose that the same holds good of the past; evolution has been slower, the more exclusively each generation has been formed by the imitation of its forerunners.

There is still one more question to ask. Are men all alike, differing merely in the _conditions_ under which they live (education, resources, government), and is evolution produced solely by changes in these _conditions_? Or are there groups of men with _hereditary differences_, born with tendencies to different activities and with apt.i.tudes leading to different evolutions, so that evolution may be the product, in part at least, of the increase, the diminution, and the displacement of these groups? Taking the extreme cases, the white, black, and yellow races of mankind, the differences in apt.i.tude are obvious; no black people has ever developed a civilisation. It is thus probable that smaller hereditary differences may have had their share in the determination of events. If so, historical evolution would be partly produced by physiological and anthropological causes. But history provides us with no sure means of determining the action of these hereditary differences between men; it goes no further than the conditions of their existence.

The last question of history remains insoluble by historical methods.

CHAPTER V

EXPOSITION

We have still to study a question whose practical interest is obvious: What are the forms in which historical works present themselves? These forms are, in fact, very numerous. Some of them are antiquated; not all are legitimate; the best have their drawbacks. We should ask, therefore, not only what are the forms in which historical works appear, but also which of these represent truly rational types of exposition.

By "historical works" we mean here all those which are intended to communicate results obtained by the labour of historical construction, whatever may be the nature, the extent, and the bearing of these results. The critical elaboration of doc.u.ments, which is treated of in Book II., and which is preparatory to historical construction, is naturally excluded.

Historians may differ, and up to the present have differed, on several essential points. They have not always had, nor have they all now, the same conception of the end aimed at by historical work; hence arise differences in the nature of the facts chosen, the manner of dividing the subject, that is, of co-ordinating the facts, the manner of presenting them, the manner of proving them. This would be the place to indicate how "the mode of writing history" has evolved from the beginning. But as the history of the modes of writing history has not yet been written well,[216] we shall here content ourselves with some very general remarks on the period prior to the second half of the nineteenth century, confining ourselves to what is strictly necessary for the understanding of the present situation.

I. History was first conceived as the narration of memorable events. To preserve the memory and propagate the knowledge of glorious deeds, or of events which were of importance to a man, a family, or a people; such was the aim of history in the tune of Thucydides and Livy. In addition, history was early considered as a collection of precedents, and the knowledge of history as a practical preparation for life, especially political life (military and civil). Polybius and Plutarch wrote to instruct, they claimed to give recipes for action. Hence in cla.s.sical antiquity the subject-matter of history consisted chiefly of political incidents, wars, and revolutions. The ordinary framework of historical exposition (within which the facts were usually arranged in chronological order) was the life of a person, the whole life of a people, or a particular period in it; there were in antiquity but few essays in general history. As the aim of the historian was to please or to instruct, or to please and instruct at the same time, history was a branch of literature: there were not too many scruples on the score of proofs; those who worked from written doc.u.ments took no care to distinguish the text of such doc.u.ments from their own text; in reproducing the narratives of their predecessors they adorned them with details, and sometimes (under pretext of being precise) with numbers, with speeches, with reflections, and elegances. We can in a manner see them at work in every instance where it is possible to compare Greek and Roman historians, Ephorus and Livy, for example, with their sources.

The writers of the Renaissance directly imitated the ancients. For them, too, history was a literary art with apologetic aims or didactic pretensions. In Italy it was too often a means of gaining the favour of princes, or a theme for declamations. This state of affairs lasted a long time. Even in the seventeenth century we find, in Mezeray, an historian of the ancient cla.s.sical pattern.

However, in the historical literature of the Renaissance, two novelties claim our attention, in which the mediaeval influence is incontrovertibly manifest. On the one hand we see the retention of a form of exposition which was unusual in antiquity, which was created by the Catholic historians of the later ages (Eusebius, Orosius), and which enjoyed great favour in the Middle Ages,--that which, instead of embracing only the history of a single man, family, or people, embraces universal history. On the other hand there was introduced a mechanical artifice of exposition, having its origin in a practice common in the mediaeval schools (the gloss), which had far-reaching consequences. The custom arose of adding notes to printed books of history.[217] Notes have made it possible to distinguish between the historical narrative and the doc.u.ments which support it, to give references to sources, to disenc.u.mber and ill.u.s.trate the text. It was in collections of doc.u.ments, and in critical dissertations, that the artifice of annotation was first employed; thence it penetrated, slowly, into historical works of other cla.s.ses.

A second period begins in the eighteenth century. The "philosophers"

then began to conceive history as the study, not of events for their own sakes, but of the habits of men. They were thus led to take an interest, not only in facts of a political order, but in the evolution of the arts, the sciences, of industry, and in manners. Montesquieu and Voltaire personified these tendencies. The _Essai sur les moeurs_ is the first sketch, and, in some respects, the masterpiece of history thus conceived. The detailed narration of political and military events was still regarded as the main work of history, but to this it now became customary to add, generally by way of supplement or appendix, a sketch of the "progress of the human mind." The expression "history of civilisation" appears before the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time German university professors, especially at Gottingen, were creating, in order to supply educational needs, the new form of the historical "manual," a methodical collection of carefully justified facts, with no literary or other pretensions. Collections of historical facts, made with a view to aid in the interpretation of literary texts, or out of mere curiosity in regard to the things of the past, had existed from ancient times; but the medleys of Athenaeus and Aulus Gellius, or the vaster and better arranged compilations of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are by no means to be compared with the "scientific manuals" of which the German professors then gave the models. These professors, moreover, contributed towards the clearing up of the vague, general notion which the philosophers had of "civilisation," for they applied themselves to the organisation of the history of languages, of literatures, of the arts, of religions, of law, of economic phenomena, and so on, as so many separate branches of study.