Darwin and Modern Science (1909)
Edited by A.C. Seward
XXVII. DARWINISM AND HISTORY.
By J.B. BURY, Litt.D., LL.D.
Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge.
1. Evolution, and the principles associated with the Darwinian theory,
could not fail to exert a considerable influence on the studies connected
with the history of civilised man. The speculations which are known as
"philosophy of history," as well as the sciences of anthropology,
ethnography, and sociology (sciences which though they stand on their own
feet are for the historian auxiliary), have been deeply affected by these
principles. Historiographers, indeed, have with few exceptions made little
attempt to apply them; but the growth of historical study in the nineteenth
century has been determined and characterised by the same general principle
which has underlain the simultaneous developments of the study of nature,
namely the GENETIC idea. The "historical" conception of nature, which has
produced the history of the solar system, the story of the earth, the
genealogies of telluric organisms, and has revolutionised natural science,
belongs to the same order of thought as the conception of human history as
a continuous, genetic, causal process—a conception which has
revolutionised historical research and made it scientific. Before
proceeding to consider the application of evolutional principles, it will
be pertinent to notice the rise of this new view.
2. With the Greeks and Romans history had been either a descriptive record
or had been written in practical interests. The most eminent of the
ancient historians were pragmatical; that is, they regarded history as an
instructress in statesmanship, or in the art of war, or in morals. Their
records reached back such a short way, their experience was so brief, that
they never attained to the conception of continuous process, or realised
the significance of time; and they never viewed the history of human
societies as a phenomenon to be investigated for its own sake. In the
middle ages there was still less chance of the emergence of the ideas of
progress and development. Such notions were excluded by the fundamental
doctrines of the dominant religion which bounded and bound men's minds. As
the course of history was held to be determined from hour to hour by the
arbitrary will of an extra-cosmic person, there could be no self-contained
causal development, only a dispensation imposed from without. And as it
was believed that the world was within no great distance from the end of
this dispensation, there was no motive to take much interest in
understanding the temporal, which was to be only temporary.
The intellectual movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
prepared the way for a new conception, but it did not emerge immediately.
The historians of the Renaissance period simply reverted to the ancient
pragmatical view. For Machiavelli, exactly as for Thucydides and Polybius,
the use of studying history was instruction in the art of politics. The
Renaissance itself was the appearance of a new culture, different from
anything that had gone before; but at the time men were not conscious of
this; they saw clearly that the traditions of classical antiquity had been
lost for a long period, and they were seeking to revive them, but otherwise
they did not perceive that the world had moved, and that their own spirit,
culture, and conditions were entirely unlike those of the thirteenth
century. It was hardly till the seventeenth century that the presence of a
new age, as different from the middle ages as from the ages of Greece and
Rome, was fully realised. It was then that the triple division of ancient,
medieval, and modern was first applied to the history of western
civilisation. Whatever objections may be urged against this division,
which has now become almost a category of thought, it marks a most
significant advance in man's view of his own past. He has become conscious
of the immense changes in civilisation which have come about slowly in the
course of time, and history confronts him with a new aspect. He has to
explain how those changes have been produced, how the transformations were
effected. The appearance of this problem was almost simultaneous with the
rise of rationalism, and the great historians and thinkers of the
eighteenth century, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Gibbon, attempted to
explain the movement of civilisation by purely natural causes. These
brilliant writers prepared the way for the genetic history of the following
century. But in the spirit of the Aufklarung, that eighteenth-century
Enlightenment to which they belonged, they were concerned to judge all
phenomena before the tribunal of reason; and the apotheosis of "reason"
tended to foster a certain superior a priori attitude, which was not
favourable to objective treatment and was incompatible with a "historical
sense." Moreover the traditions of pragmatical historiography had by no
means disappeared.
3. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the meaning of genetic
history was fully realised. "Genetic" perhaps is as good a word as can be
found for the conception which in this century was applied to so many
branches of knowledge in the spheres both of nature and of mind. It does
not commit us to the doctrine proper of evolution, nor yet to any
teleological hypothesis such as is implied in "progress." For history it
meant that the present condition of the human race is simply and strictly
the result of a causal series (or set of causal series)--a continuous
succession of changes, where each state arises causally out of the
preceding; and that the business of historians is to trace this genetic
process, to explain each change, and ultimately to grasp the complete
development of the life of humanity. Three influential writers, who
appeared at this stage and helped to initiate a new period of research, may
specially be mentioned. Ranke in 1824 definitely repudiated the
pragmatical view which ascribes to history the duties of an instructress,
and with no less decision renounced the function, assumed by the historians
of the Aufklarung, to judge the past; it was his business, he said, merely
to show how things really happened. Niebuhr was already working in the
same spirit and did more than any other writer to establish the principle
that historical transactions must be related to the ideas and conditions of
their age. Savigny about the same time founded the "historical school" of
law. He sought to show that law was not the creation of an enlightened
will, but grew out of custom and was developed by a series of adaptations
and rejections, thus applying the conception of evolution. He helped to
diffuse the notion that all the institutions of a society or a notion are
as closely interconnected as the parts of a living organism.
4. The conception of the history of man as a causal development meant the
elevation of historical inquiry to the dignity of a science. Just as the
study of bees cannot become scientific so long as the student's interest in
them is only to procure honey or to derive moral lessons from the labours
of "the little busy bee," so the history of human societies cannot become
the object of pure scientific investigation so long as man estimates its
value in pragmatical scales. Nor can it become a science until it is
conceived as lying entirely within a sphere in which the law of cause and
effect has unreserved and unrestricted dominion. On the other hand, once
history is envisaged as a causal process, which contains within itself the
explanation of the development of man from his primitive state to the point
which he has reached, such a process necessarily becomes the object of
scientific investigation and the interest in it is scientific curiosity.
At the same time, the instruments were sharpened and refined. Here Wolf, a
philologist with historical instinct, was a pioneer. His "Prolegomena" to
Homer (1795) announced new modes of attack. Historical investigation was
soon transformed by the elaboration of new methods.
5. "Progress" involves a judgment of value, which is not involved in the
conception of history as a genetic process. It is also an idea distinct
from that of evolution. Nevertheless it is closely related to the ideas
which revolutionised history at the beginning of the last century; it swam
into men's ken simultaneously; and it helped effectively to establish the
notion of history as a continuous process and to emphasise the significance
of time. Passing over earlier anticipations, I may point to a "Discours"
of Turgot (1750), where history is presented as a process in which "the
total mass of the human race" "marches continually though sometimes slowly
to an ever increasing perfection." That is a clear statement of the
conception which Turgot's friend Condorcet elaborated in the famous work,
published in 1795, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de
l'esprit humain". This work first treated with explicit fulness the idea
to which a leading role was to fall in the ideology of the nineteenth
century. Condorcet's book reflects the triumphs of the Tiers etat, whose
growing importance had also inspired Turgot; it was the political changes
in the eighteenth century which led to the doctrine, emphatically
formulated by Condorcet, that the masses are the most important element in
the historical process. I dwell on this because, though Condorcet had no
idea of evolution, the pre-dominant importance of the masses was the
assumption which made it possible to apply evolutional principles to
history. And it enabled Condorcet himself to maintain that the history of
civilisation, a progress still far from being complete, was a development
conditioned by general laws.
6. The assimilation of society to an organism, which was a governing
notion in the school of Savigny, and the conception of progress, combined
to produce the idea of an organic development, in which the historian has
to determine the central principle or leading character. This is
illustrated by the apotheosis of democracy in Tocqueville's "Democratie en
Amerique", where the theory is maintained that "the gradual and progressive
development of equality is at once the past and the future of the history
of men." The same two principles are combined in the doctrine of Spencer
(who held that society is an organism, though he also contemplated its
being what he calls a "super-organic aggregate") (A society presents
suggestive analogies with an organism, but it certainly is not an organism,
and sociologists who draw inferences from the assumption of its organic
nature must fall into error. A vital organism and a society are radically
distinguished by the fact that the individual components of the former,
namely the cells, are morphologically as well as functionally
differentiated, whereas the individuals which compose a society are
morphologically homogeneous and only functionally differentiated. The
resemblances and the differences are worked out in E. de Majewski's
striking book "La Science de la Civilisation", Paris, 1908.), that social
evolution is a progressive change from militarism to industrialism.
7. the idea of development assumed another form in the speculations of
German idealism. Hegel conceived the successive periods of history as
corresponding to the ascending phases or ideas in the self-evolution of his
Absolute Being. His "Lectures on the Philosophy of History" were published
in 1837 after his death. His philosophy had a considerable effect, direct
and indirect, on the treatment of history by historians, and although he
was superficial and unscientific himself in dealing with historical
phenomena, he contributed much towards making the idea of historical
development familiar. Ranke was influenced, if not by Hegel himself, at
least by the Idealistic philosophies of which Hegel's was the greatest. He
was inclined to conceive the stages in the process of history as marked by
incarnations, as it were, of ideas, and sometimes speaks as if the ideas
were independent forces, with hands and feet. But while Hegel determined
his ideas by a priori logic, Ranke obtained his by induction--by a strict
investigation of the phenomena; so that he was scientific in his method and
work, and was influenced by Hegelian prepossessions only in the kind of
significance which he was disposed to ascribe to his results. It is to be
noted that the theory of Hegel implied a judgment of value; the movement
was a progress towards perfection.
8. In France, Comte approached the subject from a different side, and
exercised, outside Germany, a far wider influence than Hegel. The 4th
volume of his "Cours de philosophie positive", which appeared in 1839,
created sociology and treated history as a part of this new science, namely
as "social dynamics." Comte sought the key for unfolding historical
development, in what he called the social-psychological point of view, and
he worked out the two ideas which had been enunciated by Condorcet: that
the historian's attention should be directed not, as hitherto, principally
to eminent individuals, but to the collective behaviour of the masses, as
being the most important element in the process; and that, as in nature, so
in history, there are general laws, necessary and constant, which condition
the development. The two points are intimately connected, for it is only
when the masses are moved into the foreground that regularity, uniformity,
and law can be conceived as applicable. To determine the social-
psychological laws which have controlled the development is, according to
Comte, the task of sociologists and historians.
9. The hypothesis of general laws operative in history was carried further
in a book which appeared in England twenty years later and exercised an
influence in Europe far beyond its intrinsic merit, Buckle's "History of
Civilisation in England" (1857-61). Buckle owed much to Comte, and
followed him, or rather outdid him, in regarding intellect as the most
important factor conditioning the upward development of man, so that
progress, according to him, consisted in the victory of the intellectual
over the moral laws.
10. The tendency of Comte and Buckle to assimilate history to the sciences
of nature by reducing it to general "laws," derived stimulus and
plausibility from the vista offered by the study of statistics, in which
the Belgian Quetelet, whose book "Sur l'homme" appeared in 1835, discerned
endless possibilities. The astonishing uniformities which statistical
inquiry disclosed led to the belief that it was only a question of
collecting a sufficient amount of statistical material, to enable us to
predict how a given social group will act in a particular case. Bourdeau,
a disciple of this school, looks forward to the time when historical
science will become entirely quantitative. The actions of prominent
individuals, which are generally considered to have altered or determined
the course of things, are obviously not amenable to statistical computation
or explicable by general laws. Thinkers like Buckle sought to minimise
their importance or explain them away.
11. These indications may suffice to show that the new efforts to
interpret history which marked the first half of the nineteenth century
were governed by conceptions closely related to those which were current in
the field of natural science and which resulted in the doctrine of
evolution. The genetic principle, progressive development, general laws,
the significance of time, the conception of society as an organic
aggregate, the metaphysical theory of history as the self-evolution of
spirit,--all these ideas show that historical inquiry had been advancing
independently on somewhat parallel lines to the sciences of nature. It was
necessary to bring this out in order to appreciate the influence of
Darwinism.
12. In the course of the dozen years which elapsed between the appearances
of "The Origin of Species" (observe that the first volume of Buckle's work
was published just two years before) and of "The Descent of Man" (1871),
the hypothesis of Lamarck that man is the co-descendant with other species
of some lower extinct form was admitted to have been raised to the rank of
an established fact by most thinkers whose brains were not working under
the constraint of theological authority.
One important effect of the discovery of this fact (I am not speaking now
of the Darwinian explanation) was to assign to history a definite place in
the coordinated whole of knowledge, and relate it more closely to other
sciences. It had indeed a defined logical place in systems such as Hegel's
and Comte's; but Darwinism certified its standing convincingly and without
more ado. The prevailing doctrine that man was created ex abrupto had
placed history in an isolated position, disconnected with the sciences of
nature. Anthropology, which deals with the animal anthropos, now comes
into line with zoology, and brings it into relation with history. (It is
to be observed that history is (not only different in scope but) not
coextensive with anthropology IN TIME. For it deals only with the
development of man in societies, whereas anthropology includes in its
definition the proto-anthropic period when anthropos was still non-social,
whether he lived in herds like the chimpanzee, or alone like the male
ourang-outang. (It has been well shown by Majewski that congregations--
herds, flocks, packs, etc.--of animals are not SOCIETIES; the
characteristic of a society is differentiation of function. Bee hives, ant
hills, may be called quasi-societies; but in their case the classes which
perform distinct functions are morphologically different.) Man's condition
at the present day is the result of a series of transformations, going back
to the most primitive phase of society, which is the ideal (unattainable)
beginning of history. But that beginning had emerged without any breach of
continuity from a development which carries us back to a quadrimane
ancestor, still further back (according to Darwin's conjecture) to a marine
animal of the ascidian type, and then through remoter periods to the lowest
form of organism. It is essential in this theory that though links have
been lost there was no break in the gradual development; and this
conception of a continuous progress in the evolution of life, resulting in
the appearance of uncivilised Anthropos, helped to reinforce, and increase
a belief in, the conception of the history of civilised Anthropos as itself
also a continuous progressive development.
13. Thus the diffusion of the Darwinian theory of the origin of man, by
emphasising the idea of continuity and breaking down the barriers between
the human and animal kingdoms, has had an important effect in establishing
the position of history among the sciences which deal with telluric
development. The perspective of history is merged in a larger perspective
of development. As one of the objects of biology is to find the exact
steps in the genealogy of man from the lowest organic form, so the scope of
history is to determine the stages in the unique causal series from the
most rudimentary to the present state of human civilisation.
It is to be observed that the interest in historical research implied by
this conception need not be that of Comte. In the Positive Philosophy
history is part of sociology; the interest in it is to discover the
sociological laws. In the view of which I have just spoken, history is
permitted to be an end in itself; the reconstruction of the genetic process
is an independent interest. For the purpose of the reconstruction,
sociology, as well as physical geography, biology, psychology, is
necessary; the sociologist and the historian play into each other's hands;
but the object of the former is to establish generalisations; the aim of
the latter is to trace in detail a singular causal sequence.
14. The success of the evolutional theory helped to discredit the
assumption or at least the invocation of transcendent causes.
Philosophically of course it is compatible with theism, but historians have
for the most part desisted from invoking the naive conception of a "god in
history" to explain historical movements. A historian may be a theist;
but, so far as his work is concerned, this particular belief is otiose.
Otherwise indeed (as was remarked above) history could not be a science;
for with a deus ex machina who can be brought on the stage to solve
difficulties scientific treatment is a farce. The transcendent element had
appeared in a more subtle form through the influence of German philosophy.
I noticed how Ranke is prone to refer to ideas as if they were transcendent
existences manifesting themselves in the successive movements of history.
It is intelligible to speak of certain ideas as controlling, in a given
period,--for instance, the idea of nationality; but from the scientific
point of view, such ideas have no existence outside the minds of
individuals and are purely psychical forces; and a historical "idea," if it
does not exist in this form, is merely a way of expressing a synthesis of
the historian himself.
15. From the more general influence of Darwinism on the place of history
in the system of human knowledge, we may turn to the influence of the
principles and methods by which Darwin explained development. It had been
recognised even by ancient writers (such as Aristotle and Polybius) that
physical circumstances (geography, climate) were factors conditioning the
character and history of a race or society. In the sixteenth century Bodin
emphasised these factors, and many subsequent writers took them into
account. The investigations of Darwin, which brought them into the
foreground, naturally promoted attempts to discover in them the chief key
to the growth of civilisation. Comte had expressly denounced the notion
that the biological methods of Lamarck could be applied to social man.
Buckle had taken account of natural influences, but had relegated them to a
secondary plane, compared with psychological factors. But the Darwinian
theory made it tempting to explain the development of civilisation in terms
of "adaptation to environment," "struggle for existence," "natural
selection," "survival of the fittest," etc. (Recently O. Seeck has applied
these principles to the decline of Graeco-Roman civilisation in his
"Untergang der antiken Welt", 2 volumes, Berlin, 1895, 1901.)
The operation of these principles cannot be denied. Man is still an
animal, subject to zoological as well as mechanical laws. The dark
influence of heredity continues to be effective; and psychical development
had begun in lower organic forms,--perhaps with life itself. The organic
and the social struggles for existence are manifestations of the same
principle. Environment and climatic influence must be called in to explain
not only the differentiation of the great racial sections of humanity, but
also the varieties within these sub-species and, it may be, the
assimilation of distinct varieties. Ritter's "Anthropogeography" has
opened a useful line of research. But on the other hand, it is urged that,
in explaining the course of history, these principles do not take us very
far, and that it is chiefly for the primitive ultra-prehistoric period that
they can account for human development. It may be said that, so far as
concerns the actions and movements of men which are the subject of recorded
history, physical environment has ceased to act mechanically, and in order
to affect their actions must affect their wills first; and that this
psychical character of the causal relations substantially alters the
problem. The development of human societies, it may be argued, derives a
completely new character from the dominance of the conscious psychical
element, creating as it does new conditions (inventions, social
institutions, etc.) which limit and counteract the operation of natural
selection, and control and modify the influence of physical environment.
Most thinkers agree now that the chief clews to the growth of civilisation
must be sought in the psychological sphere. Imitation, for instance, is a
principle which is probably more significant for the explanation of human
development than natural selection. Darwin himself was conscious that his
principles had only a very restricted application in this sphere, as is
evident from his cautious and tentative remarks in the 5th chapter of his
"Descent of Man". He applied natural selection to the growth of the
intellectual faculties and of the fundamental social instincts, and also to
the differentiation of the great races or "sub-species" (Caucasian,
African, etc.) which differ in anthropological character. (Darwinian
formulae may be suggestive by way of analogy. For instance, it is
characteristic of social advance that a multitude of inventions, schemes
and plans are framed which are never carried out, similar to, or designed
for the same end as, an invention or plan which is actually adopted because
it has chanced to suit better the particular conditions of the hour (just
as the works accomplished by an individual statesman, artist or savant are
usually only a residue of the numerous projects conceived by his brain).
This process in which so much abortive production occurs is analogous to
elimination by natural selection.)
16. But if it is admitted that the governing factors which concern the
student of social development are of the psychical order, the preliminary
success of natural science in explaining organic evolution by general
principles encouraged sociologists to hope that social evolution could be
explained on general principles also. The idea of Condorcet, Buckle, and
others, that history could be assimilated to the natural sciences was
powerfully reinforced, and the notion that the actual historical process,
and every social movement involved in it, can be accounted for by
sociological generalisations, so-called "laws," is still entertained by
many, in one form or another. Dissentients from this view do not deny that
the generalisations at which the sociologist arrives by the comparative
method, by the analysis of social factors, and by psychological deduction
may be an aid to the historian; but they deny that such uniformities are
laws or contain an explanation of the phenomena. They can point to the
element of chance coincidence. This element must have played a part in the
events of organic evolution, but it has probably in a larger measure helped
to determine events in social evolution. The collision of two unconnected
sequences may be fraught with great results. The sudden death of a leader
or a marriage without issue, to take simple cases, has again and again led
to permanent political consequences. More emphasis is laid on the decisive
actions of individuals, which cannot be reduced under generalisations and
which deflect the course of events. If the significance of the individual
will had been exaggerated to the neglect of the collective activity of the
social aggregate before Condorcet, his doctrine tended to eliminate as
unimportant the roles of prominent men, and by means of this elimination it
was possible to found sociology. But it may be urged that it is patent on
the face of history that its course has constantly been shaped and modified
by the wills of individuals (We can ignore here the metaphysical question
of freewill and determinism. For the character of the individual's brain
depends in any case on ante-natal accidents and coincidences, and so it may
be said that the role of individuals ultimately depends on chance,--the
accidental coincidence of independent sequences.), which are by no means
always the expression of the collective will; and that the appearance of
such personalities at the given moments is not a necessary outcome of the
conditions and cannot be deduced. Nor is there any proof that, if such and
such an individual had not been born, some one else would have arisen to do
what he did. In some cases there is no reason to think that what happened
need ever have come to pass. In other cases, it seems evident that the
actual change was inevitable, but in default of the man who initiated and
guided it, it might have been postponed, and, postponed or not, might have
borne a different cachet. I may illustrate by an instance which has just
come under my notice. Modern painting was founded by Giotto, and the
Italian expedition of Charles VIII, near the close of the sixteenth
century, introduced into France the fashion of imitating Italian painters.
But for Giotto and Charles VIII, French painting might have been very
different. It may be said that "if Giotto had not appeared, some other
great initiator would have played a role analogous to his, and that without
Charles VIII there would have been the commerce with Italy, which in the
long run would have sufficed to place France in relation with Italian
artists. But the equivalent of Giotto might have been deferred for a
century and probably would have been different; and commercial relations
would have required ages to produce the rayonnement imitatif of Italian art
in France, which the expedition of the royal adventurer provoked in a few
years." (I have taken this example from G. Tarde's "La logique sociale" 2
(page 403), Paris, 1904, where it is used for quite a different purpose.)
Instances furnished by political history are simply endless. Can we
conjecture how events would have moved if the son of Philip of Macedon had
been an incompetent? The aggressive action of Prussia which astonished
Europe in 1740 determined the subsequent history of Germany; but that
action was anything but inevitable; it depended entirely on the personality
of Frederick the Great.
Hence it may be argued that the action of individual wills is a determining
and disturbing factor, too significant and effective to allow history to be
grasped by sociological formulae. The types and general forms of
development which the sociologist attempts to disengage can only assist the
historian in understanding the actual course of events. It is in the
special domains of economic history and Culturgeschichte which have come to
the front in modern times that generalisation is most fruitful, but even in
these it may be contended that it furnishes only partial explanations.
17. The truth is that Darwinism itself offers the best illustration of the
insufficiency of general laws to account for historical development. The
part played by coincidence, and the part played by individuals--limited by,
and related to, general social conditions--render it impossible to deduce
the course of the past history of man or to predict the future. But it is
just the same with organic development. Darwin (or any other zoologist)
could not deduce the actual course of evolution from general principles.
Given an organism and its environment, he could not show that it must
evolve into a more complex organism of a definite pre-determined type;
knowing what it has evolved into, he could attempt to discover and assign
the determining causes. General principles do not account for a particular
sequence; they embody necessary conditions; but there is a chapter of
accidents too. It is the same in the case of history.
18. Among the evolutional attempts to subsume the course of history under
general syntheses, perhaps the most important is that of Lamprecht, whose
"kulturhistorische Methode," which he has deduced from and applied to
German history, exhibits the (indirect) influence of the Comtist school.
It is based upon psychology, which, in his view, holds among the sciences
of mind (Geisteswissenschaften) the same place (that of a
Grundwissenschaft) which mechanics holds among the sciences of nature.
History, by the same comparison, corresponds to biology, and, according to
him, it can only become scientific if it is reduced to general concepts
(Begriffe). Historical movements and events are of a psychical character,
and Lamprecht conceives a given phase of civilisation as "a collective
psychical condition (seelischer Gesamtzustand)" controlling the period, "a
diapason which penetrates all psychical phenomena and thereby all
historical events of the time." ("Die kulturhistorische Methode", Berlin,
1900, page 26.) He has worked out a series of such phases, "ages of
changing psychical diapason," in his "Deutsche Geschichte" with the aim of
showing that all the feelings and actions of each age can be explained by
the diapason; and has attempted to prove that these diapasons are exhibited
in other social developments, and are consequently not singular but
typical. He maintains further that these ages succeed each other in a
definite order; the principle being that the collective psychical
development begins with the homogeneity of all the individual members of a
society and, through heightened psychical activity, advances in the form of
a continually increasing differentiation of the individuals (this is akin
to the Spencerian formula). This process, evolving psychical freedom from
psychical constraint, exhibits a series of psychical phenomena which define
successive periods of civilisation. The process depends on two simple
principles, that no idea can disappear without leaving behind it an effect
or influence, and that all psychical life, whether in a person or a
society, means change, the acquisition of new mental contents. It follows
that the new have to come to terms with the old, and this leads to a
synthesis which determines the character of a new age. Hence the ages of
civilisation are defined as the "highest concepts for subsuming without
exception all psychical phenomena of the development of human societies,
that is, of all historical events." (Ibid. pages 28, 29.) Lamprecht
deduces the idea of a special historical science, which might be called
"historical ethnology," dealing with the ages of civilisation, and bearing
the same relation to (descriptive or narrative) history as ethnology to
ethnography. Such a science obviously corresponds to Comte's social
dynamics, and the comparative method, on which Comte laid so much emphasis,
is the principal instrument of Lamprecht.
19. I have dwelt on the fundamental ideas of Lamprecht, because they are
not yet widely known in England, and because his system is the ablest
product of the sociological school of historians. It carries the more
weight as its author himself is a historical specialist, and his historical
syntheses deserve the most careful consideration. But there is much in the
process of development which on such assumptions is not explained,
especially the initiative of individuals. Historical development does not
proceed in a right line, without the choice of diverging. Again and again,
several roads are open to it, of which it chooses one--why? On Lamprecht's
method, we may be able to assign the conditions which limit the psychical
activity of men at a particular stage of evolution, but within those limits
the individual has so many options, such a wide room for moving, that the
definition of those conditions, the "psychical diapasons," is only part of
the explanation of the particular development. The heel of Achilles in all
historical speculations of this class has been the role of the individual.
The increasing prominence of economic history has tended to encourage the
view that history can be explained in terms of general concepts or types.
Marx and his school based their theory of human development on the
conditions of production, by which, according to them, all social movements
and historical changes are entirely controlled. The leading part which
economic factors play in Lamprecht's system is significant, illustrating
the fact that economic changes admit most readily this kind of treatment,
because they have been less subject to direction or interference by
individual pioneers.
Perhaps it may be thought that the conception of SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
(essentially psychical), on which Lamprecht's "psychical diapasons" depend,
is the most valuable and fertile conception that the historian owes to the
suggestion of the science of biology--the conception of all particular
historical actions and movements as (1) related to and conditioned by the
social environment, and (2) gradually bringing about a transformation of
that environment. But no given transformation can be proved to be
necessary (pre-determined). And types of development do not represent
laws; their meaning and value lie in the help they may give to the
historian, in investigating a certain period of civilisation, to enable him
to discover the interrelations among the diverse features which it
presents. They are, as some one has said, an instrument of heuretic
method.
20. The men engaged in special historical researches--which have been
pursued unremittingly for a century past, according to scientific methods
of investigating evidence (initiated by Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke)--have for the
most part worked on the assumptions of genetic history or at least followed
in the footsteps of those who fully grasped the genetic point of view. But
their aim has been to collect and sift evidence, and determine particular
facts; comparatively few have given serious thought to the lines of
research and the speculations which have been considered in this paper.
They have been reasonably shy of compromising their work by applying
theories which are still much debated and immature. But historiography
cannot permanently evade the questions raised by these theories. One may
venture to say that no historical change or transformation will be fully
understood until it is explained how social environment acted on the
individual components of the society (both immediately and by heredity),
and how the individuals reacted upon their environment. The problem is
psychical, but it is analogous to the main problem of the biologist.
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