Chapter 18

The theory of values.

Finally, another of the thinkers that we have mentioned, Rickert (following Windelband), wishes to integrate naturalistic and abstract knowledge with the historical knowledge of individual reality. Being reasonably diffident as to the possibility of a metaphysic as an "experimental science" (such as Zeller was among the first to desire), he moves towards a general theory of values. This indeed is the form (imperfect because stained with transcendence) by means of which many in our day are approaching a philosophy as the science of the spirit (or of immanent value). But in the hands of Windelband and Rickert it is understood as a primacy of the practical reason, which is taken to govern the double series of the world of the sciences and the world of history. Thisdoubtless represents progress, as compared with empiricism and positivism; but not as compared with the Hegelian Logic of the pure concept, which included in itself what is and what ought to be.

Such, briefly stated, is the present state of logical doctrines concerning the Concept.

[1]De sophist. elench.ch. 34.

[2]Metaphys.M 4, p. 1078 b 28-30; cf. A 6, p. 987 b 2-3.

[3]Cf.Æsthetic,part ii. chap. i.

[4]See in this connection the observations of Lasson, in the preface to his recent German translation of theMetaphysic,Jena, Diederichs, 1907.

[5]Cf. especially theParmenides,theTheætetus,andBook of the Republic.

[6]Metaphys.E I, p. 1025 b, 1026 a.

[7]Metaphys.vi. 1027 a.

[8]Anal. post.i. ch. 30.

[9]See the writings of Gentile concerning De Wulf and La Berthonnière in theCritica,iii. pp. 203-21, iv. pp. 431-445.

[10]Prantl,Gesch. d. Logik,iii. pp. 182-3.

[11]For these references to writings of Luther, see F. J. Schmidt,Zur Wiedergeburt des Idealismus,Leipzig, 1908, pp. 44-6.

[12]See my Essay upon Hegel, ch. ii.

[13]Preface toNouveaux Essais.

[14]See what is said on this point in myÆsthetic,2Part II. Chap. VIII.

[15]Krit. d. rein. Vern.ed. Kirchmann, pp. 22-3.

[16]Wiss. d. Logik,i. p. 35; cfr. p. 19.

[17]Kuno Fischer in hisLogic,when expounding the thought of Hegel, clearly distinguishes the empirical concepts from the pure concepts, and notes that those which are pure or philosophical, are, in the spirit, the basis and presupposition of the others. "These others, the empirical, are formed from single representations or intuitions, by uniting homogeneous characteristics and separating them from the heterogeneous; and thus arise general representations, concepts of classes": empirical, because of their empirical origin, and representative, because they represent entire classes of single objects, that is, are generalized representations. But at the base of each of these are found judgments or syntheses, which contain non-empirical and non-representable elements, elements which area prioriand only thinkable. These are the true concepts, the first thoughts in the ideal order, without which nothing can be thought (Logik2,i. sect. i. § 3). The difference between these pure concepts or categories and empirical concepts or categories is not quantitative, but qualitative: the pure concepts are not the most general, the broadest classes; they do not represent phenomena, but connections and relations; they can be compared to the signs (+,-, x, ÷, √, etc.) of arithmetical operations; they are not obtainable by abstraction, indeed it is by means of them that all abstractions are affected (loc. cit.§§ 5-6).

[18]See my essay,What is Living and what is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel,for the criticism here briefly summarized.

[19]Dialektik,ed. Halpern, pp. 203-245.

[20]Werke,ed. Grisebach, ii. chap. 39.

[21]The movement of Italian thought in the first decades of the nineteenth century was rather a progress of national philosophic culture than a factor in the general history of philosophy. In this last respect, the rôle of Italy was for the time being ended; though it did not end in the seventeenth century with Campanella and Galileo (as foreign historians and the Italians who copy them believe). It ended magnificently in the first half of the eighteenth century with Vico, the last representative of the Renaissance and the first of Romanticism. The influence of German philosophy continued to manifest itself in Italy in the nineteenth century, at first almost entirely through French literature, then directly. It can be studied in the three principal thinkers of the first half of the century, Galuppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti. The first began from the Scottish school, and while attacking Kant, he absorbed not a few of his principles. The second, also in a polemical sense and in a Catholic wrapping, can be called the Italian Kant. The third, who had always only the slightest consciousness of history, assumed the same position as Schelling and Hegel. To have attained (between 1850 and 1860) to such historical consciousness is the merit of Bertrando Spaventa (see especially his book,La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea,new edition, by G. Gentile, Bari, Laterza, 1908), who represented Hegelianism in Italy in a very cautious and critical form. But there was no true surpassing of Hegelianism either by his disciples or by his adversaries, and some original thought is to be found only among non-professional philosophers, particularly in Æsthetic, with Francesco de Sanctis (cf.Estetica,part ii. chap. 15).

[22]Krit. d. rein. Vernunft, loc. cit.

[23]Logik,p. 42sqq.

[24]See, among other books,L'Analisi delle sensazioni,Italian translation Turin, Bocca; 1903.

[25]Grenzen d. naturwissensch. Begriffsbildung,Freiburg i. B, 1896-1902, chaps. 1-3.

[26]See above,p. 528.

[27]See his articles in theRevue de métaphys. et de morale,vols. vii. viii. xi.

[28]"Introduction à la Métaphysique," in theRevue de métaphys. et de mor.xi. pp. 1-36.

[29]La Valeur de la science,Paris, 1904.

Secular neglect of the theory of history.

The theory of the individual judgment and therefore of historical thought, has been the least elaborated of all logical theories in the course of philosophic history. It is a very true and profound remark that the historical sense is a modern thing, and that the nineteenth century is the first great century of historical thinking. Of course, since history has always been made and individual judgments pronounced, theoretic observations upon historical judgments have not been altogether wanting in the past. The spirit is, as we know, the whole spirit at every instant, and in this respect nothing is ever new under the sun, indeed, nothing is new, either before or after the sun.[1]But history, and in particular, the theory of history, did not formerly arouse interest nor attract attention, nor was its importance felt,nor was it the object of anxious and wide investigations to the degree witnessed in the nineteenth century and in our times, when the consciousness of immanence triumphs more and more—and immanence means history.

Græco-Roman world's ideas of history.

Transcendence, then, which has for centuries been more or less dominant, supplies the reason why the study of the individual and the theory of history were neglected. In Greek philosophy, individual judgments were either despised, as in Platonism, or superseded by and confused with logical judgments of the universal, as in Aristotle. In thePoetics[2]the character of history did not escape him. Differing from science (which was directed to the universal) and from poetry (which was directed to the possible), it expresses things that have happened in their individuality,ta genomena(what Alcibiades did and experienced). But in theOrganon,although he distinguished between the universal (ta katholou) and the individual (ta kath' ekastou), between man and Callias,[3]he made no use of the distinction, and divided judgments into universal, particular and indefinite. The theory of history was not raised to the rank of philosophic treatment in antiquity, like the other forms of knowledge, and especiallyphilosophy, mathematics and poetry. What mark the ancients have left upon the argument is limited to incidental observations, and some altogether empirical remarks here and there upon the method of writing history. They were wont to assign extrinsic ends to it, such as utility and advice upon the conduct of life. Such utterances of good common sense as that of Quintilian, to the effect that history is writtenad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum,do not possess great philosophic weight. Nor had the rules of the rhetoricians philosophic value, such as that of Dionysus of Halicarnassus, that historical narrative, without becoming quite poetical, should be somewhat more elevated in tone than ordinary discourse; or that of Cicero, who demanded for historical styleverba ferme poëtarum,"perhaps" (wrote Vico, making the rhetorical rule profound) "in order that historians might be maintained in their most ancient possession, since, as has been demonstrated in theScienza nuova,the first historians of the nations were the first poets."[4]More important, on the other hand, are the demands (as expressed especially by Polybius) of what is indispensable to history. Besides the element of fact, there is needful (Polybius observed)knowledge of the nature of the things of which the happenings are portrayed, of military art for military things, of politics for things political. History is written, not from books, as is the way with compilers and men of letters, but from original documents, by visiting the places where it has occurred and by penetrating it with experience and with thought.[5]

The theory of history in mediæval and modern philosophy

The abstractionist and anti-historical character of the Aristotelian Logic had an injurious effect in the schools, though, on the other hand, it allied itself well with the persistent transcendentalism. Certainly, just as in the Middle Ages appeared reflections upon history, so there could be no avoiding the distinction between what was knownlogiceand what was knownhistorice,or, as Leibnitz afterwards formulated the distinction, betweenpropositions de raisonandpropositions de fait.But these latter were always regarded with a compassionate eye, as a sort of uncertain and inferior truth. The ideal of exact science would have been to absorb truths of fact in truths of reason, and to resolve them all into a philosophy, or rather into a universal mathematics. Nor did the empiricists succeed in increasing their credit.These certainly paid particular attention to facts (hence the polemic of the Anti-Aristotelians and the origin of the new instrument of observation and induction). But by weakening the consciousness of the concrete universal they also weakened that of the concrete individual, and therefore presented the latter in the mutilated form of species and genera, of types and classes. Bacon, had he done nothing else, at any rate assigned a place to history in his classification of knowledge, which was divided, as we know, according to the three faculties (memory, imagination and reason), into History, Poetry and Philosophy. He passed in review the two great classes of history, natural and civil (the first of which was either narrative or inductive, the second more variously subdivided); thus he even pointed out the kinds of history that were desirable, but of which no conspicuous examples were yet extant, such as literary history.[6]Hobbes, on the other hand, having distinguished the two species of cognition, one of reason and the other of fact, "altera facti, et est cognitio propria testium, cujus conscriptio est historia," and having subdivided this into natural and civil, "neutra" (he added, that is to say neither the natural nor the civil) "pertinet adinstitutum nostrum" which was concerned only with thecognitio consequentiarum,that is to say, science and philosophy.[7]Locke is not less anti-historical than Descartes and Spinoza, and even Leibnitz, who was very learned, did not recognize the autonomy of historical work, and continued to consider it as directed towards utilitarian and moral ends.

Treatises on historical art in the Renaissance.

Reflections upon history, suggested rather by the professional needs of historians than by a need for systematization and a profound philosophy, continued on their way, almost apart from the philosophy of the time. From the Renaissance onwards, treatises on historical art were multiplied at the hands of Robortelli, Atanagi, Riccoboni, Foglietta, Beni, Mascardi, and of many others, even of non-Italians; but their discussions usually centred upon elocution, upon the use of ornament and of digressions, upon arguments worthy of history, and the like. Among these writers of treatises we must note (here as well as in the history of Poetics and of Rhetoric) Francesco Patrizio or Patrizzi (1560), for his ideas, sometimes acute, sometimes incoherent and extravagant. Overcoming one of the prejudices of empiricism, he justly wishedthat the concept of history should not be limited to military enterprises and political negotiations alone, and that it should be extended to all the doings of men. With a like superiority to empirical views, he found historical representation not only in words, but also in painting and sculpture—(our times, so fruitful of histories graphically illustrated, should admit that he was to some extent right), and he did not accept chronological limits. He also insisted upon the mode of testing historical truth and upon the degree of credibility of witnesses. But he became extravagant, when he admitted a history of the future, calling the prophets as witnesses, and incoherent, when he both denied and affirmed the moral end of history.[8]

Treatises upon method.

Another form of empiricism, certainly more important, the methodological, which dealt with the canons and criteria to be borne in mind in making historical researches, accompanied the often rhetorical empiricism of writers of treatises. The reference to the duties of the historian in one place in Cicero was repeated and commented upon by all. But this treatment became gradually more wide, as we see especially inthe work of Vossius,Ars historica sive de historia et historiae natura, historiaeque scribendae praeceptis commentatio(1623). The term "Historic" dates from this book and is formed on the analogy of Logic, Poetic, Rhetoric, etc., and applied to the theory or Logic of history. Gervinus (1837) and Droysen (1858) tried to bring this term again into vogue. The methodological treatment of historical research was more widely developed in the scholastic manuals of Logic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as theLogica seu ars ratiocinandiof Leclerc (1692).[9]With these canons arising in the field of research and historical criticism, we may opportunely compare those concerning the mode of valuing and weighing evidence, which were gradually unified in juridical literature. Methodological treatment has also progressed in our times, in manuals such as those of Droysen, of Bernheim, of Langlois-Seignobos; but the general tendency of these works (as is also evident from their apparatus in heuristic, in criticism, in comprehension and in exposition) remains and must remain altogether empirical.

The theory of history and G. B. Vico.

The first philosopher who gave to Historyan importance equal to Philosophy was Vico, with his already-mentioned union of philosophy and philology, oftruthandcertainty,and with the example that he offered of a philosophicsystem,which is also ahistoryof the human race: an "eternal idealhistory, upon which the histories of nations run intime." For this reason (not less than from his strong consciousness of the difference in character between the metaphysical concept and mathematical abstraction) Vico was an Anti-Cartesian. He stands between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the opposer of the past and of the future, or of the nearest past and the nearest future. Indeed, there is even in Vico a trace of that vice which arises from a too indiscriminate identification of philosophy and history, which certainly constitute an identity, but an identity which is a synthesis and therefore a distinction. Hence, when no account is taken of this, the substantial truth affirmed loses its balance in philosophism and mythologism. The real epochs of Vico are too philosophic and have in them something forced; the ideal epochs are too historical and have in them something of exuberance and of contingency. The real epochs are not exempt from philosophistic caprices; the ideal sometimesbecome converted into a mythology (though full of profound meanings). For this reason, it has been possible now to praise, now to blame him for having invented thePhilosophy of history.There is indeed in him, here and there, some hint of a philosophy of historysensu deteriori,but above all he is the great philosopher and the great historian.

The anti-historicism of the eighteenth century and Kant.

As the eighteenth century did not really know the concept of philosophy, so was it ignorant of that of history: its anti-historicism has become proverbial. There appeared at this time some celebrated theoretic manifestations of historical scepticism, of the negation of history, which seemed, as before to Sextus Empiricus, a thing without art and without method (ἅτεχνον ... καὶ ἐκ τἥς ἀμεθόδον ὕλης τυγχράνουσαν). The book of Melchior Delfico,Pensieri sull' Istoria e sull' incertezza ed inutilità della medesima(1808), is one of the last manifestations of this sort. But all the thinkers of that time were of this opinion; even Kant, in whose wide culture were certainly two lacunæ—artistic and historical. And if in the course of elaborating his system he was led by logical necessity to meditate upon art, or rather upon beauty, he never paid serious attention to the problem of history.

Concealed historical value of the a priori synthesis.

Yet Kant is the true, though unconscious creator of the new Logic of history. To him belongs the merit, not only of having shown the importance of the historical judgment, but also of having given the formula of the identity of philosophy and history in thea priorisynthesis. The logical revolution effected by Kant consists in this: that he perceives and proclaims that to know is not to think the concept abstractly, but to think the concept in the intuition, and that consequently to think is tojudge.The theory of the judgment takes the place of that of the concept and is truly the theory of the concept, in so far as it becomes concrete. What does it matter that he is not aware of all this and that instead of referring the logicala priorisynthesis to history, he refers it to the sciences, constituting it an instrument not of history, but of the sciences; and that instead of exhausting knowledge in thea priorisynthesis, he leaves outside of it true knowledge as an unattainable, or theoretically unattainable ideal? What does it matter that when confronted with the problem of the judgment of existence, he solves it like Gaunilo and withdraws existence from thought, removing from it the character of predicate and of concept and making of it a position or an impositionab extra?What does it matter that his history is without historical developments and wanting even in knowledge of the history of philosophy, and that in the parts of the so-called system that he has developed (for example, in the doctrine of virtue and of rights) there reigns the most squalid crowd of abstractions and of anti-historical determinations? What does it matter that we find the man of the eighteenth century on every page of his book, and that he was absolutely without sympathy for the tendencies of thought of the Hamanns and of they Herders? There always remains the fact that thea priorisynthesis carried in itself even that which its discoverer ignored or denied.

The theory of history in Hegel.

It would be preferable to say that all Kant's failures in recognition and all his lacunæ are certainly of importance, just because they provided his followers with a new problem, and generated by way of contrariety the philosophy of Schelling and the historical philosophy of Hegel. Not even in Hegel is there to be found the elaboration of the doctrine of the individual judgment, nor is its identity with that of the concept explicitly recognized. But in Hegel not only do we find ourselves in the full historical atmosphere (suffice it to recall his histories of art,of religion, of philosophy and of the general development of the human race, which are still the most profound and the most stimulating writings upon history that exist); but these historical elucidations are all connected with the fundamental thought of his Logic: the concept is immanent and is divided in itself in the judgment, of which the general formula is that the individualisthe universal, the subjectisthe predicate, every judgment is a judgment of the universal, and the universal is the dialectic of opposites. For this reason also, we find in the works of Hegel a historical method far in advance of all his predecessors and also (save in a few points) of his successors. He maintained, with much vigour, the necessity of the interpretative and rational element in history; and to those who demanded that a historian should be disinterested, in the same way as a magistrate who judges a case, he replied that since the magistrate has nevertheless his interest, that for the right, so has the historian also his interest, namely that for truth.[10]

W. von Humboldt.

Hegel's defect in relation to history (as was Vico's before him but on a larger scale) was the philosophist error, which led him to the design of a philosophy of history, rising above historyproperly so-called. The psychological explanations of this strange duplication, together with its philosophic motives, have already been adduced.[11]Wilhelm von Humboldt certainly alluded to Hegel and intended to oppose him in this respect in his discourse concerning the office of the historian (1820). Here the method of the writer of history was likened to that of the artist. Fancy is as necessary to the historian as to the poet, Humboldt said, not in the sense of free fancy, but as the gift of reconstruction and of association. History, like art, seeks the true form of events, the pure and concrete form of real facts. But whereas art hardly touches the fugitive manifestations of the real, in order to rise above all reality, history attaches itself to those manifestations and becomes totally immersed in them. The ideas which the historian elaborates are not introduced by him into history, but discovered in reality itself, of which they constitute the essence. They are the outcome of the fulness of events, not of an extrinsic addition, as in what is called philosophic or theological history (Philosophy of history). Certainly, universal history is not intelligible without a world-order (eine Weltregierung). But the historian possesses no instrumentwhich enables him directly to examine this design, and every effort in which he attempts to reach it, makes him fall into empty and arbitrary teleologism. He must, on the contrary, proceed by deducing it from facts examined in their individuality; for the end of history can only be the realization of the idea, which humanity must represent from all sides and in all the different modes in which finite form can ever be united with the idea. The course of events can only be interrupted when idea and form are no longer able to interpenetrate one another.[12]The protest was justified, not indeed against the fundamental doctrine of Hegel, but rather against one of its particular aberrations. But the protest was inferior in the determinateness of its concepts to the philosophy which it opposed. Even in the healthy tendency of the Hegelian doctrine, ideas should not be introduced but discovered in history. And if it sometimes seemed that the Philosophy of history introduced them from without, this happened because in that case true ideas were not employed and the concreteness of the fact was not respected.

F. Brentano.

The theory of the individual judgment hasmade no progress in the Logics of the nineteenth century, save for certain timely explanations concerning the existential character of the judgment given by Brentano and his school. Brentano, who is an Anti-Kantian, considers the period inaugurated by Kant to be that of a new philosophical decadence. Yet notwithstanding his sympathy for mediæval scholasticism and for modern psychologism, he has too much philosophic acumen to remain fixed in the one or to lose himself in the other. Thus the tripartition of the forms of the spirit, maintained by him,[13]beneath the external appearance of a renovated Cartesianism, bears traces of the abhorred criticism, romanticism and idealism. The first form, the pure representation, answers to the æsthetic moment; the second, the judgment, is the primitive logical form answering to the Kantiana priorisynthesis; and love and hatred, the third form, which contains will and feeling, is not without precedent among the Post-Kantians themselves. He reasonably criticizes the various more or less mechanical theories, which treat the judgment as a connection of representations or a subsumption of concepts, and defends theidiogeneticagainst allogenetic theories. Butwhen he tries to prove that the judgment "A is" cannot be resolved into "A" and "is" (that is, into A and existence), because the concept of existence is found in the judgment and does not precede it, he goes beyond the mark. For the concept of existence certainly does not precede, but neither does itfollowthe judgment: it is contemporaneous; that is to say, it exists only in the judgment, like the category in thea priorisynthesis. And he goes beyond the mark again, when he makes existentiality the character of the judgment, whereas existentiality is only one of the categories and consequently, if it be indispensable for the constitution of the judgment, it is not sufficient for any judgment, since for every judgment there is necessary the inner determination of the judgment as essence and as existence. For the rest, this is easily seen in the theories of his school, which end by establishing a double degree or form of judgment, thus creating a duality that cannot be maintained.[14]In any case, in the researches of Brentano and his followers, there is affirmed the need for a complete doctrine of the judgment and of its relation (which in our opinion is one of identity)with the doctrine of the concept. The theories of values and of judgments of values already mentioned, in their investigation of the universal or valuative element, express the same need from another point of view; although none of them discovers, by recalling the Kantian-Hegelian tradition, that values are immanent in single facts, and that consequently judgments of value, as judgments, are the same as individual judgments.

Controversies concerning the nature of history.

Enquiries concerning the character of history may assist the constitution of a theory of individual judgments. These enquiries have never enjoyed so much favour as in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Naturalism or positivism has provided the incentive to such enquiries, for it brought into being the problem: "whether history is or is not a (natural) science," by its attempt to violate and pervert history by raising it (as they said, and it must have sounded ironical) to the rank of a science, that is to say, of a naturalistic science. There were two answers to the problem: (1) that history is a sciencesui generis(not natural); (2) that it is, not a science, but an art, a particular form of art, the representation of the real.

Rickert; Xénopol. History as science of the individual.

The first of these answers is to be found in thework of Rickert (1896-1902), cited above, and in the almost contemporary work of Xénopol (1899).[15]Rickert's work is that of a professional philosopher, and a follower of Windelband; the other, of an intelligent historian, who is somewhat lacking in equipment as a philosopher. Rickert, after having examined the naturalistic process and demonstrated how it finds a limit in individuality, next examines historical process, which takes possession of the field that naturalism is obliged to relinquish. Xénopol upholds the same distinction, of a double series of sciences, historical and theoretical, ofphénomènes successifsand ofphénomènes de répétition.To both these writers (besides the merit of having revived, in opposition to naturalism, the consciousness of individuality) belongs that of having understood that the field of history extends far beyond that ordinarily assigned to it, and embraces every manifestation of the real. But merely successive phenomena or phenomena of mere repetition do not exist and are not conceivable; nor is it true that the sciences dealing with the former stop at differences of fact and neglect identities. For how could a history of political facts be written, if no attention werepaid to the constant political nature of those facts? or of poetry, without paying attention to the constant poetical nature of all its historical manifestations? or of zoological species, without paying attention to the constant nature of the organism and of life? The distinction, therefore, as formulated by Xénopol, is little enough elaborated, not to say crude. Rickert, for his part, falls into a like error, owing to his failure to respect that intuitive and individual element, which he had previously admitted. Hence the serious contradictions, in which he becomes involved in the second part of his book. After having defined the concept as peculiar to the naturalistic method, he eventually claims to find also a species of concept in the procedure of history, which he had distinguished from and opposed to the former: ahistoricalconcept, which is obtained by cutting out, in the extensive and intensive infinity of facts, certain groups, which are placed in relation by means of practical criteria of importance and of value. It is true (he writes) that the concept has been defined by us as something of universal content; but now wewishprecisely to surpass this one-sidedness, and therefore in the interest of logic it is justifiable to give the name concepts also to the thoughts which express thehistorical essenceof reality.[16]It is worse still when he attempts to explain the ineradicable intuitive and æsthetic element of historical narration; for holding art to be without truth and of use only in producing some sort of artistic (hedonistic?) effect, he recognizes that element as a means of endowing narration with liveliness and of exciting the fancy.[17]A consequence of this lack of understanding of the æsthetic function has been the laborious and vain attempt which Rickert is obliged to make, to determine to what personages and facts we are to attribute objective historical value.

History as art.

The second answer, that history is an art (that is to say, a special form of art, which is distinguished from the rest, in that it represents, not the possible but the real), avoids the above-mentioned difficulties. It distinguishes clearly between the natural sciences and history; it explains the ineliminability and the function of the intuitive element in history, and does not lose itself in the vain search for the distinctive criterion between historical facts and non-historical facts, because it declares that all facts are historical.[18]But it must in any case be corrected and completed withthe conclusion that the representation of the real is no longer simple representation or simple art, but the interpenetration of thought and representation, that is to say, philosophy-history.[19]

Other controversies concerning history.

All the other controversies recently engaged upon, relate to the criteria of interpretation, or the system of ideas, which serves as the basis of any sort of historical narration. Thus there have been disputes as to the precise meaning and the greater or less importance in history of climate, of race, of economic factors, of individuality, of collectivity, of culture, of morality, and of intelligence; and also as to how teleology, immanence, providence, and so on, are to be understood in history. In these disputes there recur constantly the names of Buckle, of Taine, of Spencer, of Ranke, of Marx, of Lamprecht and of others. It is evident that those controversies concern, not only the gnoseological nature of historical writing, but the system of the spirit and of the real, the conception of the world itself. The materialist and the spiritualist, the theist and the pantheist, will solve them differently. To write their history here would be to go beyond the boundaries of Logic and of the particular history of Logic, that we have set ourselves.

[1]See my observations concerning the perpetuity of historical criticism inCritica,vi. pp. 383-84.

[2]Poetics,chap. 8.

[3]Anal. pr.i. chap. 27.

[4]Works, ed. Ferrari.

[5]See (in particular for Polybius) E. Pais,Della storiografia della filosofia della storia presso i Greci,Livorno, 1889.

[6]De dign. et augm.i. ii. chaps. 1-2.

[7]De homine,chap. 9.

[8]E. Maffei,I trattati dell' arte storica del Rinascimento fino al secolo XVII,Napoli, 1897.

[9]G. Gentile, "Contribution à l'histoire de la méthode historique," in theRevue de synthèse historique,v. pp. 129-152.

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