APPENDIX III

PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY

Having established the unity of philosophy and historiography, and shown that the division between the two has but a literary and didactic value, because it is founded upon the possibility of placing in the foreground of verbal exposition now one and now the other of the two dialectical elements of that unity, it is well to make quite clear what is the true object of the treatises bearing the traditional title of philosophic 'theory' or 'system': to what (in a word) philosophy can be reduced.

Philosophy, in consequence of the new relation in which it has been placed, cannot of necessity be anything but the methodological moment of historiography: a dilucidation of the categories constitutive of historical judgments, or of the concepts that direct historical interpretation. And since historiography has for content the concrete life of the spirit, and this life is life of imagination and of thought, of action and of morality (or of something else, if anything else can be thought of), and in this variety of its forms remains always one, the dilucidation moves in distinguishing between æsthetic and logic, between economic and ethic, uniting and dissolving them all in the philosophy of the spirit. If a philosophical problem shows itself to be altogether sterile for the historical judgment, we have there the proof that such problem is otiose, badly stated, and in reality does not exist. If the solution of a problem—that is to say, of a philosophical proposition—instead of making history more intelligible, leaves it obscure or confounds it with others, or leaps over it and lightly condemns or negates it, we have there the proof that such proposition and the philosophy with which it is connected are arbitrary, though it may preserve interest in other respects, as a manifestation of sentiment or of imagination.

The definition of philosophy as 'methodology' is not at first exempt from doubts, even on the part of one ready to accept in general the tendency that it represents; because philosophy and methodology are terms often contrasted, and a philosophy that leads to a methodology is apt to be tainted with empiricism. But certainly the methodology of which we are here speaking is not at all empirical; indeed, it appears just for the purpose of correcting and taking the place of the empirical methodology of professional historians and of other such specialists in all that greater part of it where it is a true and proper, though defective, attempt toward the philosophical solution of the theoretical problems raised by the study of history, or toward philosophical methodology and philosophy as methodology.

If, however, the above-mentioned dispute is settled as soon as stated, this cannot be said of another, where our position finds itself opposed to a widely diffused and ancient conception of philosophy as the solver of the mystery of the universe, knowledge of ultimate reality, revelation of the world of noumena, which is held to be beyond the world of phenomena, in which we move in ordinary life and in which history also moves. This is not the place to give the history of that idea; but we must at least say this, that its origin is religious or mythological, and that it persisted even among those philosophers who were most successful in directing thought toward our earth as the sole reality, and initiated the new philosophy as methodology of the judgment or of historical knowledge. It persisted in Kant, who admitted it as the limit of his criticism; it persisted in Hegel, who framed his subtle researches in logic and philosophy of the spirit in a sort of mythology of the Idea.

Nevertheless, the diversity of the two conceptions manifested itself in an ever-increasing ratio, finding expression in various formulas of the nineteenth century, such as psychology against metaphysic, a philosophy of experience and immanence, aprioristic against transcendental philosophy, positivism against idealism; and although the polemic was as a rule ill conducted, going beyond the mark and ending by unconsciously embracing that very metaphysic, transcendency, and apriority, that very abstract idealism, which it had set out to combat, the sentiment that inspired it was legitimate. And the philosophy of methodology has made it its own, has combated the same adversary with better arms, has certainly insisted upon a psychological view, but a speculative psychological view, immanent in history, but dialectically immanent, differing in this from positivism, that while the latter made necessary the contingent, it made the contingent necessary, thus affirming the right of thought to the hegemony. Such a philosophy is just philosophy as history (and so history as philosophy), and the determination of the philosophical moment in the purely categorical and methodological moment.

The greater vigour of this conception in respect to the opposite, the superiority of philosophy as methodology over philosophy as metaphysic, is shown by the capacity of the former to solve the problems of the latter by criticizing them and pointing out their origin. Metaphysic, on the other hand, is incapable of solving not only the problems of methodology, but even its own problems, without having recourse to the fantastic and arbitrary. Thus questions as to the reality of the external world, of soul-substance, of the unknowable, of dualisms and of antitheses, and so forth, have disappeared in gnoseological doctrines, which have substituted better conceptions for those which we formerly possessed concerning the logic of the sciences, explaining those questions as eternally renascent aspects of the dialectic or phenomenology of knowledge.

The view of philosophy as metaphysic is, however, so inveterate and so tenacious that it is not surprising that it should still give some sign of life in the minds of those who have set themselves free of it in general, but have not applied themselves to eradicating it in all its particulars, nor closed all the doors by which it may return in a more or less unexpected manner. And if we rarely find it openly and directly displayed now, we may yet discern or suspect it in one or other of its aspects or attitudes, persisting like kinks of the mind, or unconscious preconceptions, which threaten to drive philosophy as methodology back into the wrong path, and to prepare the return, though but for a brief period, of the metaphysic that has been superseded.

It seems to me opportune to provide here a clear statement of some of these preconceptions, tendencies, and habits, pointing out the errors which they contain and entail.

First of all the survivals of the past that are still common comes the view of philosophy as having a fundamental problem to solve. Now the conception of a fundamental problem is intrinsically at variance with that of philosophy as history, and with the treatment of philosophy as methodology of history, which posits, and cannot do otherwise than posit, the infinity of philosophical problems, all certainly connected with one another, but not one of which can be considered fundamental, for just the same reason that no single part of an organism is the foundation of all the others, but each one is in its turn foundation and founded. If, indeed, methodology take the substance of its problems from history, history in its most modest but concrete form of history of ourselves, of each one of us as an individual, this shows us that we pass on from one to another particular philosophical problem at the promptings of our life as it is lived, and that one or the other group or class of problems holds the field or has especial interest for us, according to the epochs of our life. And we find the same to be the case if we look at the wider but less definite spectacle afforded by the already mentioned general history of philosophy—that is to say, that according to times and peoples, philosophical problems relating sometimes to morality, sometimes to politics, to religion, or to the natural sciences and mathematics, have in turn the upper hand. Every particular philosophical problem has been a problem of the whole of philosophy, either openly or by inference, but we never meet with a general problem of philosophy, owing to the contradiction thereby implied. And if there does seem to be one (and it certainly does seem so), it is really a question of appearances, due to the fact that modern philosophy, which comes to us from the Middle Ages and was elaborated during the religious struggles of the Renaissance, has preserved a strong imprint of theology in its didactic form, not less than in the psychological disposition of the greater part of those addicted to it. Hence arises the fundamental and almost unique importance usurped by the problem of thought and being, which after all was nothing more than the old problem of this world and the next, of earth and heaven, in a critical and gnoseological form. But those who destroyed or who initiated the destruction of heaven and of the other world and of transcendental philosophy by immanent philosophy began at the same moment to corrode the conception of a fundamental problem, although they were not fully aware of this (for we have said above that they remained trammelled in the philosophy of the Thing in Itself or in the Mythology of the Idea). That problem was rightly fundamental for religious spirits, who held that the whole intellectual and practical dominion of the world was nothing, unless they had saved their own souls or their own thought in another world, in the knowledge of a world of noumena and reality. But such it was not destined to remain for the philosophers, henceforth restricted to the world alone or to nature, which has no skin and no kernel and is all of a piece. What would happen were we to resume belief in a fundamental problem, dominating all others? The other problems would either have to be considered as all dependent upon it and therefore solved with it, or as problems no longer philosophical but empirical. That is to say, all the problems appearing every day anew in science and life would lose their value, either becoming a tautology of the fundamental solution or being committed to empirical treatment. Thus the distinction between philosophy and methodology, between metaphysic and philosophy of the spirit, would reappear, the first transcendental as regards the second, the second aphilosophical as regards the first.

Another view, arising from the old metaphysical conception of the function of philosophy, leads to the rejection of distinction in favour of unity, thus conforming to the theological conception that all distinctions are unified by absorption in God, and to the religious point of view, which forgets the world and its necessities in the vision of God. From this ensues a disposition which may be described as something between indifferent, accommodating, or weak, in respect of particular problems, and the pernicious doctrine of the double faculty is almost tacitly renewed, that is, of intellectual intuition or other superior cognoscitive faculty, peculiar to the philosopher and leading to the vision of true reality, and of criticism or thought prone to interest itself in the contingent and thus greatly inferior in degree and free to proceed with a lack of speculative rigour not permissible in the other. Such a disposition led to the worst possible consequences in the philosophical treatises of the Hegelian school, where the disciples (differing from the master) generally gave evidence of having meditated but little or not at all upon the problems of the various spiritual forms, freely accepting vulgar opinions concerning them, or engaging in them with the indifference of men sure of the essential, and therefore cutting and mutilating them without pity, in order to force them into their pre-established schemes with all haste, thus getting rid of difficulties by means of this illusory arrangement. Hence the emptiness and tiresomeness of their philosophies, from which the historian, or the man whose attention is directed to the understanding of the particular and the concrete, failed to learn anything that could be of use to him in the direction of his own studies and in the clearer formulation of his own judgments. And since the mythology of the idea reappeared in positivism as mythology of evolution, here too particular problems (which are indeed the only philosophical problems) received merely schematic and empty treatment and did not progress at all. Philosophy as history and methodology of history restores honour to the virtue of acuteness or discernment, which the theological unitarianism of metaphysic tended to depreciate: discernment, which is prosaic but severe, hard and laborious but prolific, which sometimes assumes the unsympathetic aspect of scholasticism and pedantry, but is also of use in this aspect, like every discipline, and holds that the neglect of distinction for unity is also intimately opposed to the conception of philosophy as history.

A third tendency (I beg to be allowed to proceed by enumeration of the various sides of the same mental attitude for reasons of convenience), a third tendency also seeks the definitive philosophy, untaught by the historical fact that no philosophy has ever been definitive or has set a limit to thought, or has ever been thoroughly convinced that the perpetual changing of philosophy with the world which perpetually changes is not by any means a defect, but is the nature itself of thought and reality. Or, rather, such teaching, and the proposition that follows it, do not fail altogether of acceptance, and they are led to believe that the spirit, ever growing upon itself, produces thoughts and systems that are ever new. But since they have retained the presupposition of a fundamental problem which (as we have said) substantially consists of the ancient problem of religion alone, and each problem well determined implies a single solution, the solution given of the 'fundamental problem' naturally claims to be the definitive solution of the problem of philosophy itself. A new solution could not appear without a new problem (owing to the logical unity of problem and solution); but that problem, which is superior to all the others, is on the contrary the only one. Thus a definitive philosophy, assumed in the conception of the fundamental problem, is at variance with historical experience, and more irreconcilably, because in a more evidently logical manner, with philosophy as history, which, admitting infinite problems, denies the claim for and the expectation of a definitive philosophy. Every philosophy is definitive for the problem which it solves, but not for the one that appears immediately afterward, at the foot of the first, nor for the other problems which will arise from the solution of this. To close the series would be to turn from philosophy to religion and to rest in God.

Indeed, the fourth preconception, which we now proceed to state, and which links itself with the preceding, and, together with all the preceding, to the theological nature of the old metaphysic, concerns the figure of the philosopher, as Buddha or the Awakened One, who posits himself as superior to others (and to himself in the moments when he is not a philosopher), because he holds himself to be free from human passions, illusions, and agitations by means of philosophy. This is the case with the believer, who fixes his mind upon God and shakes off earthly cares, like the lover, who feels himself blessed in the possession of the beloved and defies the whole world. But the world soon takes its revenge both upon the believer and the lover, and does not fail to insist upon its rights. Such an illusion is impossible for the philosophical historian, who differs from the other in feeling himself irresistibly involved in the course of history, as at once both subject and object, and who is therefore led to negate felicity or beatitude, as he negates every other abstraction (because, as has been well said, le bonheur est le contraire de la sensation de vivre), and to accept life as it is, as joy that overcomes sorrow and perpetually produces new sorrows and new unstable joys. And history, which he thinks as the only truth, is the work of tireless thought, which conditions practical work, as practical work conditions the new work of thought. Thus the primacy formerly attributed to the contemplative life is now transferred not to active life, but to life in its integrity, which is at once thought and action. And every man is a philosopher (in his circle, however wide or narrow it may appear), and every philosopher is a man, indissolubly linked to the conditions of human life, which it is not given to anyone to transcend. The mystical or apocalyptic philosopher of the Græco-Roman decadence was well able to separate himself from the world: the great thinkers, like Hegel, who inaugurated the epoch of modern philosophy, although they denied the primacy of the abstract contemplative life, were liable to fall back into the error of belief in this supremacy and to conceive a sphere of absolute spirit, a process of liberation through art, religion, and philosophy, as a means of reaching it; but the once sublime figure of the philosopher blessed in the absolute, when we try to revive it in this modern world of ours, becomes tinged with the comic. It is true that satire has now but little material upon which to exercise itself, and is reduced to aiming its shafts at the 'professors of philosophy' (according to the type of philosopher that has been created by modern universities, which is partly the heir of the 'master of theology' of the Middle Ages): against the professors, that is to say, to the extent that they continue to repeat mechanically abstract general propositions, and seem to be unmoved by the passions and the problems that press upon them from all sides and vainly ask for more concrete and actual treatment. But the function and the social figure of the philosopher have profoundly changed, and we have not said that the manner of being of the 'professors of philosophy' will not also change in its turn—that is to say, that the way of teaching philosophy in the universities and schools is not on the verge of experiencing a crisis, which will eliminate the last remains of the medieval fashion of formalistic philosophizing. A strong advance in philosophical culture should lead to this result: that all students of human affairs, jurists, economists, moralists, men of letters—in other words, all students of historical matters—should become conscious and disciplined philosophers, and that thus the philosopher in general, the purus philosophus, should find no place left for him among the professional specifications of knowledge. With the disappearance of the philosopher 'in general' would also disappear the last social vestige of the teleologist or metaphysician, and of the Buddha or Awakened One.

There is also a prejudice which to some extent inquinates the manner of culture of students of philosophy. They are accustomed to have recourse almost exclusively to the books of philosophers, indeed of philosophers 'in general,' of the metaphysical system-makers, in the same way as the student of theology formed himself upon the sacred texts. This method of culture, which is perfectly consequent when a start is made from the presupposition of a fundamental or single problem, of which it is necessary to know the different diverging and progressive solutions which have been attempted, is altogether inconsequent and inadequate in the case of a historical and immanent philosophy, which draws its material from all the most varied impressions of life and from all intuitions and reflections upon life. That form of culture is the reason for the aridity of the treatment of certain particular problems, for which is necessary a continued contact with daily experience (art and art criticism for æsthetic, politics, economy, judicial trials for the philosophy of rights, positive and mathematical sciences for the gnoseology of the sciences, and so on). To it is also due the aridity of treatment of those parts of philosophy themselves which are traditionally considered to constitute 'general philosophy,' for they too had their origin in life, and we must refer them back to life if we are to give a satisfactory interpretation of their propositions; we must plunge them into life again to develop them and to find in them new aspects. The whole of history is the foundation of philosophy as history, and to limit its foundation to the history of philosophy alone, and of 'general' or 'metaphysical' philosophy, is impossible, save by unconsciously adhering to the old idea of philosophy, not as methodology but as metaphysic, which is the fifth of the prejudices that we are enumerating.

This enumeration can be both lengthened and ended with the mention of a sixth preconception, relating to philosophical exposition. Owing to this, philosophy is expected to have either an architectural form, as though it were a temple consecrated to the Eternal, or a warm poetical form, as though it were a hymn to the Eternal. But these forms were part of the old content, and that form is now changed. Philosophy shows itself to be a dilucidation of the categories of historical interpretation rather than the grandiose architecture of a temple or a sacred hymn running on conventional lines. Philosophy is discussion, polemic, rigorous didactic exposition, which is certainly coloured with the sentiments of the writer, like every other literary form, able also at times to raise its voice (or on the other hand to become slight and playful, according to circumstances), but not constrained to observe rules which appear to be proper to a theological or religious content. Philosophy treated as methodology has, so to speak, caused philosophical exposition to descend from poetry to prose.

All the preconceptions, habits, and tendencies which I have briefly described should in my opinion be carefully sought out and eliminated, for it is they that impede philosophy from taking the form and proceeding in the mode suitable and adequate to the consciousness of the unity with history which it has reached. If we look merely at the enormous amount of psychological observations and moral doubts accumulated in the course of the nineteenth century by poetry, fiction, and drama, those voices of our society, and consider that in great part it remains without critical treatment, some idea can be formed of the immense amount of work that falls to philosophy to accomplish. And if on the other hand we observe the multitude of anxious questions that the great European War has everywhere raised—as to the state, as to history, as to rights, as to the functions of the different peoples, as to civilization, culture, and barbarism, as to science, art, religion, as to the end and ideal of life, and so on—we realize the duty of philosophers to issue forth from the theologico-metaphysical circle in which they remain confined even when they refuse to hear of theology and metaphysic. For notwithstanding their protests, and notwithstanding the new conception accepted and professed by them, they really remain intellectually and spiritually attached to the old ideas.

Even the history itself of philosophy has hitherto been renewed only to a small extent, in conformity with the new conception of philosophy. This new conception invites us to direct our attention to thoughts and thinkers, long neglected or placed in the second rank and not considered to be truly philosophers because they did not treat directly the 'fundamental problem' of philosophy or the great peut-être, but were occupied with 'particular problems.' These particular problems, how-ever, were destined to produce eventually a change of view as regards the 'general problem,' which emerged itself reduced to the rank of a 'particular' problem. It is simply the result of prejudice to look upon a Machiavelli, who posited the conception of the modern state, a Baltasar Gracian, who examined the question of acuteness in practical matters, a Pascal, who criticized the spirit of Jesuitry, a Vico, who renewed all the sciences of the spirit, or a Hamann, with his keen sense of the value of tradition, as minor philosophers, I do not say in comparison with some metaphysician of little originality, but even when compared with a Descartes or a Spinoza, who dealt with other but not superior problems. A schematic and bloodless history of philosophy corresponded, in fact, with the philosophy of the 'fundamental problem.' A far richer, more varied and pliant philosophy should correspond with philosophy as methodology, which holds to be philosophy not only what appertains to the problems of immanency, of transcendency, of this world and the next, but everything that has been of avail in increasing the patrimony of guiding conceptions, the understanding of actual history, and the formation of the reality of thought in which we live.

PART II

CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

I

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

We possess many works relating to the history of historiography, both special, dealing with individual authors, and more or less general, dealing with groups of authors (histories of historiography confined to one people and to a definite period, or altogether 'universal' histories). Not only have we bibliographical works and works of erudition, but criticism, some of it excellent, especially in the case of German scientific literature, ever the most vigilant of all in not leaving unexplored any nook or cranny of the dominion of knowledge. It cannot, therefore, form part of my design to treat the theme from its foundations: but I propose to make a sort of appendix or critical annotation to the collection of books and essays that I have read upon the argument. I will not say that these are all, or even that they are all those of any importance, but they ire certainly a considerable number. By means of this annotation I shall try to establish, on the one hand, in an exact manner and in conformity with the principles explained, the method of such a history, regarding which I observe that there still exist confusion and perplexity, even among the best, which lead to errors of judgment or at least of plan, and on the other hand I shall try to outline the principal periods in a summary manner, both with the view of exemplifying the method established, and, as it were, of illustrating historically the concepts exposed in the preceding theoretical pages, which might otherwise retain here and there something of an abstract appearance.

Beginning with methodical delimitations, I shall note in the first place that in a history of historiography as such, historical writings cannot be looked upon from the point of view proper to a history of literature—that is to say, as expressions of individual sentiments, as forms of art. Doubtless they are this also, and have a perfect right to form part of histories of literature, as the treatises and systems of the philosophers, the writings of Plato and Aristotle, of Bruno, of Leibnitz, and of Hegel; but in this case both are regarded not as works of history and of philosophy, but of literature and poetry; and the empirical scale of values which constitute the different modes of history in the cases of the same authors is different, because in a history of literature the place of a Plato will always be more considerable than that of an Aristotle, that of a Bruno than that of a Leibnitz, owing to the greater amount of passion and the greater richness of artistic problems contained in the former of each pair. The fact that in many volumes of literary history such diversity of treatment is not observed, and historians are talked of historically and not in a literary manner and philosophers philosophically rather than in a literary manner, is due to the substitution in such works of incoherent compilation for work that is properly critical and scientific. But the distinction between the two aspects is important for this reason also, that erroneous judgments, praise, and censure, alike unjustified, are apt to appear, owing to the careless transference of the scale of values from one history to another. The slight esteem in which Polybius was held in antiquity and for some time after, because 'he did not write well' in comparison with the splendour of Livy or with the emotional intensity of Tacitus, is an instance of this, as is likewise in Italy the excessive praise lavished upon certain historians who were little more than correct and elegant writers of prose in comparison with others who were negligent and crude in their form, but serious students. Ulrici,[1] in his youthful book on ancient historiography, which despite its heaviness and verbosity of exposition has great merits, after having discussed the 'scientific value' of that historiography, also speaks at great length of 'artistic value'; but setting aside what of arbitrary is to be found in some of the laws that he applies to historiography as art, in conformity with the æsthetic ideas of his time, it is evident that the second subject of which he treats does not coalesce with the first and is only placed side by side with it in the same way as those sections of works dealing with historical method are not connected but simply juxtaposed, and after having studied in their own way the formation of historical thought, the collection of materials or 'heuristic,' up to final 'comprehension,' begin to discuss the form of the 'exposition,' and in so doing continue without being aware of it the method of rhetorical treatises on the art of history composed during the Renaissance. These have their chief exponent in Vossius (1623). We cannot abstain from sometimes mentioning the literary form of the works of historians, nor from according their laurels to works of remarkable literary value, while noting their unsatisfactory historiographical methods; but to touch here and there upon, to discuss, to characterize, to eliminate, is of secondary importance and does not form part of the proper function of historiography, whose object is the development of historiographical thought.

The distinction between this history and that of philology or erudition is less apparent but not less indubitable, always, be it well understood, in the sense explained, of a distinction that is not a separation. This warning should be understood in respect of other exclusions that we are about to effect, without our being obliged to repeat it at every step; for the connexion between history and philology is undeniable, not less than that between history and art, or history and practical life. But that does not prevent philology in itself being the collection, the rearrangement, the purification of material, and not history. Owing to this quality it forms a part rather of the history of culture than of that of thought. It would be impossible to disassociate it from the history of libraries, archives, museums, universities, seminaries, écoles des chartes, academical and editorial enterprises, and from other institutions and proceedings of an entirely practical nature. Fueter has therefore been right in excluding from his theme in his recent work on the history of modern historiography[2] "the history of merely philological research and criticism." This has not prevented him from taking store where apposite of the school of Biondo or of that of Maurini, or of the perfecting of the method of seeking for the sources attained by the German school in the nineteenth century. The confusion and lack of development observable in the old and solid work of Wachler[3] is perhaps due to his having failed to make this distinction, to which recourse can also be had with advantage elsewhere. Wachler's work, entitled and conceived as "history of research and of the historical art from the Renaissance of letters in Europe onward," ended by assuming the appearance of a repertory or bibliographical catalogue.

The obstacles to be encountered by the distinction between the history of historiography and that of the practical tendencies, or tendencies of the social and political spirit, are more intricate. These indeed become incorporated with or at least leave their mark upon the works of historians; but it is just because we can only with difficulty perceive the line of demarcation that it is indispensable to make it quite clear. Such tendencies, such social and political spirit, belong rather to the matter than to the theoretical form of history; they are not so much historiography as history in the act and in its fieri. Machiavelli is a historian in so far as he tries to understand the course of events; he is a politician, or at least a publicist, when he posits and desires a prince, founder of a strong national state, as his ideal, reflecting this in his history. This history, in so far as it portrays that ideal and the inspiration and teaching that accompany it, here and there becomes fable (fabula docet). Thus Machiavelli belongs partly to the history of thought in the Renaissance and partly to the history of the practice of the Renaissance. Nor does this happen solely in political and social historiography, but also in literary and artistic, because there is not perhaps a critic in the world, however unprejudiced and broad in his ideas, who does not manifest tendencies in the direction of a literary renovation of his epoch together with his actual judgments and reconstructions. Now to the extent that he does this, even if it be in the same book and on the same page or in the same period, he is no longer a critic, but a practical reformer of art. In one domain of history alone is this pacific accompaniment of interpretations and aspirations impossible—in the history of philosophy, because when, as here, there is a difference between historical interpretation and the tendency of the philosopher, the difference reveals the insufficiency of the interpretation itself: in other words, if the theory of the historian of philosophy is at war with the theories of which he claims to expound the history, his theory must be false, just because it does not avail to justify the history of the theories. But this exception does not annul the distinction in other fields; indeed, it confirms it, and is not an exception in the empirical sense, as it appears to be: thought distinguishes and is distinguished from sentiment and will, but it is not distinguished from itself, precisely because it is the principle of distinction. A methodological corollary of this distinction between history of historiography and history of practical tendencies is that the introduction into the first of considerations belonging to the second is to be held erroneous. Here I think Fueter has sinned to some extent in the book to which I have already referred, where he divides his material into humanistic, political, party, imperial, particularist, Protestant, Catholic, Jesuitic, illuministic, romanticist, erudite, lirico-subjective, national, statolatral, historiographical, and the like. Only some of the above divisions belong to, or can properly be reduced to, historiographical concepts, while the majority refer to social and political life. Hence the lack of sound organization that we observe in this book, which is yet so lively and ingenious: its divisions follow one another without sufficient logicality, continuity, and necessity, and are not the result of a single thought which posits them and develops itself through them. If, on the other hand, the genuinely historiographical portions, which have become mingled with it, should be eliminated, what remained could certainly be organized, but as social and political history, no longer as historiography, because the works of historians would be consulted only as documents showing the tendencies of the times in which they were written. Machiavelli, for instance, (to use the same example) would there figure as an Italian patriot and defender of absolute power, while Vico (a much greater historian than Machiavelli) would not be able to appear at all, or hardly at all, because his relation with the political life of his time was remote and general.

What I have been expounding may be resumed by saying that the history of historiography is neither literary history nor the history of cultural, social, political, moral doings, which are of a practical nature, but that it is certainly all these things, by reason of the unbreakable unity of history, though with it the accent does not fall upon practical facts, but rather upon historiographical thought, which is its proper subject.

Having pointed out or recalled these distinctions, which, as we have seen, are sometimes neglected with evil results, we must now utter a warning against other distinctions, employed without rational basis, which rather overcloud and trouble the history of historiography than shed light upon it.

Fueter (I cite him again, although the error is not peculiar to him) declares that he has dealt in his book with historiographical theories and with historical method only in so far as they seem to have had influence upon actual historiography. The history of historicity (here is the reason he gives for the method he has followed) is as little the history of historiography as is the history of dramatic theories the history of the drama. This he considers to be proved by the fact that theory and practice often follow different paths, as, for instance, in Lope de Vega, whose theory of the drama and actual dramatic work were two different things, to such an extent that it was said of the Spanish dramatist that although he reverenced the poetical art, when he sat down to compose "he locked up the correct rules under seven keys." This argument is without doubt specious, and I was myself formerly seduced by it; but it is fallacious, as I realized when I thought it over again, and I now affirm it to be an error with all the conviction and authority of one who criticizes an error at one time his own. The argument is founded upon a false analogy between the production of art and that of history. Art, which is the work of the imagination, can be well distinguished from the theory of art, which is the work of reflection; artistic genius produces the former, the speculative intellect the latter, and it often happens with artists that the speculative intellect is inferior to their genius, so that they do one thing and say another, or say one thing and do another, without its being possible to accuse them of logical incoherence, because the incoherence is between two discordant thoughts, never between a thought and an act of the imagination. But history and theory of history are both of them works of thought, bound to one another in the same way as thought is bound to itself, since it is one. Thus no historian but possesses in a more or less reflective way his theory of history, because, not to put too fine a point upon it, every historian implicitly or explicitly conducts a polemic against other historians (against other 'versions' and 'judgments' of a fact), and how could he ever conduct a polemic or criticize others if he did not himself possess a conception of what history is and ought to be, to which to refer, a theory of history? The artist, on the other hand, in so far as he is an artist, does not polemize or criticize, but forms. It may quite well happen that an erroneous theory of historiography is expounded, while on the contrary the history as narrated may turn out to be well constructed. This is, of course, to be incoherent, but is so neither more nor less than when progress is effected in one branch of historiography, while there is backwardness in another. There may obtain, on the contrary, an excellent theory of history, where history itself is bad; but in the same way that in one field of historiography there is the sense of and striving for a better method, while there is adherence to old methods in all the other fields. The history of historiography is the history of historical thought; and here it is impossible to distinguish theory of history from history.

Another exclusion which Fueter declares that he has made is that of the philosophy of history. He does not give the reason for this, but allows it to be understood, for he evidently holds that philosophies of history do not possess a purely scientific character and are lacking in truth. But not only are what are called 'philosophies of history' erroneous conceptions of history, but so also are the naturalistic or deterministic conceptions opposed to them, and all the various forms of pseudo-history which have been described above, philological history, poetical history, rhetorical history. I do not find that he has excluded these from his history, any more than he has really excluded the theological and transcendental conception of history (philosophy of history); indeed, he constantly refers to it. Justice and logic would insist upon all or none being excluded—all really excluded, and not merely in words. But to exclude all of them, it may be said, would be anything but intelligent, because how could the history of history ever be told in such a void? What is this history but the struggle of scientific historiography against inadequate scientific formulas? Certainly the former is the protagonist, but how could a drama be presented with a protagonist lacking antagonists? And even if historical philology be not considered directly, but referred back to philology, if poetical history be referred back to literature, rhetorical or practical to social and political history, it would nevertheless be necessary always to take account of the conversion that often occurs of those various mental constructions into assertions of reality, taken in exchange for and given the value of true and proper histories. In this sense they become in turn deterministic or transcendental conceptions of history, and both of them logical or illogical representations of all the others, and end by becoming equivalent to one another dialectically, and are always before the eyes of the historian, because the perpetual condition and the perpetual sign of the progress of historical thought reside in their movement, which passes from transcendency or false immanence to pure immanence, to return to them and enter into a more profound conception of immanency. To exclude philosophies of history from the history of historiography does not, therefore, seem to me to be justifiable, for the same reason as it seems to be unjustifiable to exclude from it historiographical theories, which are the consciousness that historiography acquires of itself: owing to their homogeneity, I say, owing indeed to their identity with history, of which they do not form accidental ingredients or material elements, but constitute the very essence. A proof of this is to be found in the Historical Philosophy of France of Flint. He proceeds from a presumption that is perhaps the opposite of that of Fueter—that is to say, he treats of the philosophy of history, and not of history, but finds it impossible to maintain the dykes between the two. His treatise, therefore, when artificial obstacles have been overcome, runs like a single river and reveals to our view the whole history of historical French thought, to which Bossuet and Rollin, Condorcet and Voltaire, Auguste Comte and Michelet or Tocqueville equally belong.

At this point it will probably be objected (although Fueter does not propound this objection, it is probable that it is at the back of his mind) that what is desired in a history of historiography is not so much a history of historical thought as a history of history in the concrete: of the Storie fiorentine of Machiavelli, of the Siècle de Louis XIV of Voltaire, or of the Römische Geschichte of Niebuhr: that would be a general history, while what is desired is a specific history. But it is well to pay close attention to the meaning of such a request and to the possibility of what is asked. If I set out to write the history of the Storie fiorentine of Machiavelli, in respect to the particular material with which it deals, I shall rewrite the history of Florence, criticizing and completing Machiavelli, and shall thus be, for instance, a Villari, a Davidsohn, or a Salvemini. If I set out to write the history of the material of Voltaire's work, I shall criticize Voltaire and outline a new Siècle de Louis XIV, as has been done, for example, by Philippson. And if I set to work to examine and rethink the work of Niebuhr in respect to its particular material, I shall be a new historian of Rome, a Mommsen or (to quote the most recent writers) a Hector Pais or a Gaetano de Sanctis. But is this what is desired? Certainly not. But if this be not desired, if the particular materials of those histories are not to be taken account of, what else remains save the 'way' in which they have been conceived, the 'mental form' by means of which they construct their narratives, and therefore their theory and their historical 'thought'?

Now, if this truth be admitted (and I do not see how it can be contested) it is not possible to reject an ulterior consequence which, although it is wont to arouse in some the sensation of a paradox, does not do so in us, for we find it altogether in accordance with the conception of the identity of history with, philosophy that we have defended. Is a thought that is not thought conceivable? Is it permissible to distinguish between the thought of the historian and the thought of the philosopher? Are there perhaps two different thoughts in the world? To persist in maintaining that the thought of the historian thinks the fact and not the theory is prevented by the preceding admission, if by nothing else: that the historian always thinks at least both the theory of history and the historical fact. But this admission entails his thinking the theory of all the things that he narrates, together with the theory of history. And indeed he could not narrate without understanding them. Fueter extols the merit of Winckelmann, who was the first to conceive a history, not of artists, but of art, of a pure spiritual activity, and that of Giannone, who was the first to attempt a history of the life of jurisprudence. But these writers made the progress they did because they had a new and more accurate conception of art and of rights, and if they went wrong as to certain points, that is because they did not always think those conceptions with equal exactitude. Winckelmann, for instance, materialized the spiritual activity of the artist when he posited an abstract, fixed material ideal of beauty, and gave an abstract history of artistic styles without regard to the temperaments, historical circumstances, and individualities of the artists themselves. Giannone failed to supersede the dualism of Church and State. Without indulging in other too particular examples, it is evident at the first glance that ancient historiography concords with the ancient conception of religion of the state, of ethic, and of the whole of reality; the medieval with Christian theology and ethic; that of the first half of the nineteenth century with the idealistic and romantic philosophy, that of the second half with naturalistic and positivistic philosophy. Thus, ex parte historicorum, there is no way of distinguishing historical and philosophical thought, which are perfectly commingled in the narratives. But there is also no possibility of maintaining such a distinction ex parte philosophorum either, because, as all know, or at least say, each period has the philosophy proper to it, which is the consciousness of that period, and as such is its history, at least in germ; or, as we have put it, philosophy and history coincide. And if they coincide, the history of philosophy and the history of historiography also coincide: the one is not only not distinguishable from the other, but is not even subordinate to the other, for it is all one with it.

The historiography of philosophy has already begun to open its arms, inviting and receiving the works of the historians. Every day it understands better that a history of Greek thought is not complete without taking count of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius, nor of Roman thought without Livy and Tacitus, nor of the thought of the Renaissance without Machiavelli and Guicciardini. It must open them yet wider and clasp to its bosom even the humble medieval historiographers who noted the Gesta episcoporum or Historiolæ translationum or Vitæ sanctorum, or who bear witness to the Christian faith, according to their powers and in their own way, it is true, but not less than the great Augustine according to his powers. It must receive not only the hagiographical writers, but even obtuse philologists or sociologists who have amused us during the last decades and bear witness to the creed of positivism not other-wise than as Spencer or Haeckel in their systems. By means of this amplification of concepts and enrichment of material, the historiography of philosophy will place itself in the position of being able to show that philosophy is a force diffused throughout life, and not the particular invention and cult of certain men who are philosophers, and will obtain the means that have hitherto been lacking to effect a close conjunction with the whole historical movement.

In its turn the history of historiography will gain by the fusion, because it will find its own directive principles in philosophy, and by its means will be rendered capable of understanding both the problems of history in general and those of its various aspects as history of art and of philosophy, of economic and moral life. To seek elsewhere the criterion of explanation is vain. Fueter, who takes a glance at the most recent historiography, that posterior to 1870, at the end of his book, discerns in it the new consciousness that gives the highest place to political and military power and marks the end of the old liberalism, the strengthening of such consciousness by means of the Darwinian theories concerning the struggle for life, the influence of a more intense economical and industrial life and a greater intensity of world politics, the repercussion of Egyptian and Orientalistic discoveries, which have aided in disproving the illusion of Europe as the centre of the world, the attraction exercised by the theory of races, and so on. These observations are just, but they do not reach the heart and brain of the most recent historiography; they merely revolve round its body. The heart or brain is, as I have observed, naturalism, the ideal of historical culture inspired and to be inspired by the natural sciences. So true is this that Fueter himself burns a few grains of incense before this idol, sighing for a form of history that shall be beautiful with the beauty of a well-made machine, rivalling a book on physics such as the Theory of Tones of Helmholtz. The truth is that the ideal of the natural sciences, instead of being the perfection, is one of the many crises that historical thought has passed through and will pass through. Historical thought is dialectic of development, and not by any means a deterministic explanation by means of causes which does not explain anything because it does not develop anything. But whatever we may think of this, it is certain that naturalism—that is, the criticism of naturalism—can alone supply the clue for unravelling the web of the historiography of the last ten years; the same events and historical movements enumerated above have acted in the particular way in which they have acted owing to being constantly framed in naturalistic thought.

For the rest, nothing forbids, and it may even serve a useful purpose, that the history of philosophy and the history of historiography should receive literary treatment in different books, for altogether practical reasons, such, for instance, as the abundance of material and the different training and acquirements needed for the treatment of the different classes of material. But what is apparently disunited by practice thought really unifies; and this real unification is what I have wished to inculcate, without the pedantic idea ever passing through my mind of dictating rules for composing books, as to which it is desirable to leave all liberty of inclusion and exclusion to writers, in conformity with their various intentions.