VI THE HUMANITY OF HISTORY

Enfranchising itself from servitude to extra-mundane caprice and to blind natural necessity, freeing itself from transcendency and from false immanence (which is in its turn transcendency), thought conceives history as the work of man, as the product of human will and intellect, and in this manner enters that form of history which we shall call humanistic. This humanism first appears as in simple contrast to nature or to extra-mundane powers, and posits dualism. On the one side is man, with his strength, his intelligence, his reason, his prudence, his will for the good; on the other there is something that resists him, strives against him, upsets his wisest plans, breaks the web that he has been weaving and obliges him to weave it all over again. History, envisaged from the view-point of this conception, is developed entirely from the first of these two sides, because the other does not afford a dialectical element which can be continually met and superseded by the first, giving rise to a sort of interior collaboration, but represents the absolutely extraneous, the capricious, the accidental, the meddler, the ghost at the feast. Only in the former do we find rationality combined with human endeavour, and thus the possibility of a rational explication of history. What comes from the other side is announced, but not explained: it is not material for history, but at the most for chronicle. This first form of humanistic history is known under the various names of rationalistic, intellectualistic,[Pg 95] abstractistic, individualistic, psychological history, and especially under that of pragmatic history. It is a form generally condemned by the consciousness of our times, which has employed these designations, especially rationalism and pragmatism, to represent a particular sort of historiographical insufficiency and inferiority, and has made proverbial the most characteristic pragmatic explanations of institutions and events, as types of misrepresentation into which one must beware of falling if one wish to think history seriously. But as happens in the progress of culture and science, even if the condemnation be cordially accepted and no hesitation entertained as to drawing practical consequences from it in the field of actuality, there is not an equally clear consciousness of the reasons for this, or of the thought process by means of which it has been attained. This process we may briefly describe as follows.

Pragmatic finds the reasons for historical facts in man, but in man in so far as he is an individual made abstract, and thus opposed as such not only to the universe, but to other men, who have also been made abstract. History thus appears to consist of the mechanical action and reaction of beings, each one of whom is shut up in himself. Now no historical process is intelligible under such an arrangement, for the sum of the addition is always superior to the numbers added. To such an extent is this true that, not knowing which way to turn in order to make the sum come out right, it became necessary to excogitate the doctrine of 'little causes,' which were supposed to produce 'great effects.' This doctrine is absurd, for it is clear that great effects can only have real causes (if the illegitimate conceptions of great and small, of cause and effect, be applicable here). Such a formula, then, far from expressing the law of historical[Pg 96] facts, unconsciously expresses the defects of the doctrine, which is inadequate for its purpose. And since the rational explanation fails, there arise crowds of fancies to take its place, which are all conceived upon the fundamental motive of the abstract individual. The pragmatic explanation of religions is characteristic of this; these are supposed to have been produced and maintained in the world by the economic cunning of the priests, taking advantage of the ignorance and credulity of the masses. But historical pragmatic does not always present itself in the guise of this egoistic and pessimistic inspiration. It is not fair to accuse it of egoism and utilitarianism, when the true accusation should, as we have already said, be levelled at its abstract individualism. This abstract individualism could be and sometimes was conceived even as highly moral, for we certainly find among the pragmatics sage legislators, good kings, and great men, who benefit humanity by means of science, inventions, and well-organized institutions. And if the greedy priest arranged the deceit of religions, if the cruel despot oppressed weak and innocent people, and if error was prolific and engendered the strangest and most foolish customs, yet the goodness of the enlightened monarch and legislator created the happy epochs, caused the arts to flourish, encouraged poets, aided discoveries, encouraged industries. From these pragmatic conceptions is derived the verbal usage whereby we speak of the age of Pericles, of that of Augustus, of that of Leo X, or of that of Louis XIV. And since fanciful explanations do not limit themselves merely to individuals physically existing, but also employ facts and small details, which are also made abstract and shut up in themselves, being thus also turned into what Vico describes as 'imaginative universals,' in like manner[Pg 97] all these modes of explanation known as 'catastrophic' and making hinge the salvation or the ruin of a whole society upon the virtue of some single fact are also derived from pragmatic. Examples of this, which have also become proverbial, because they refer to concepts that have been persistently criticized by the historians of our time, are the fall of the Roman Empire, explained as the result of barbarian invasions, European civilization of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the result of the Crusades, the renascence of classical literatures, as the result of the Turkish conquest of Constantinople and of the immigration of the learned Byzantines into Italy—and the like. And in just the same way as when the conception of the single individual did not furnish a sufficient explanation recourse was for that reason had to a multiplicity of individuals, to their co-operation and conflicting action, so here, when the sole cause adduced soon proved itself too narrow, an attempt was made to make up for the insufficiency of the method by the search for and enumeration of multiple historical causes. This enumeration threatened to proceed to the infinite, but, finite or infinite as it might be, it never explained the process to be explained, for the obvious reason that the continuous is never made out of the discontinuous, however much the latter may be multiplied and solidified. The so-called theory of the causes or factors of history, which survives in modern consciousness, together with several other mental habits of pragmatic, although generally inclined to follow other paths, is rather a confession of powerlessness to dominate history by means of individual causes, or causes individually conceived, than a theory; far from being a solution, it is but a reopening of the problem.

[Pg 98]

Pragmatic therefore fails to remain human—that is to say, to develop itself as rationality; even in the human side to which it clings and in which it wishes to maintain and oppose itself to the natural or extra-natural; and having already made individuals irrational and unhuman by making them abstract, it gradually has recourse to other historical factors, and arrives finally at natural causes, which do not differ at all in their abstractness from other individual causes. This means that pragmatic, which had previously asserted itself as humanism, falls back into naturalism, from which it had distinctly separated itself. And it falls into it all the more, seeing that, as has been noted, human individuals have been made abstract, not only among themselves, but toward the rest of the universe, which remains facing them, as though it were an enemy. What is it that really rules history according to this conception? Is it man, or extra-human powers, natural or divine? The claim that history exists only as an individual experience is not maintainable; and in the pragmatic conception another agent in history is always presumed, an extra-human being which, at different times and to different thinkers, is known as fate, chance, fortune, nature, God, or by some other name. During the period at which pragmatic history flourished, and there was much talk of reason and wisdom, an expression of a monarchical or courtly tinge is to be found upon the lips of a monarch and of a philosopher who was his friend: homage was paid to sa Majesté le Hasard! Here too there is an attempt to patch up the difficulty and to seek eclectic solutions; in order to get out of it, we find pragmatic affirming that human affairs are conducted half by prudence and half by fortune, that intelligence[Pg 99] contributes one part, fortune another, and so on. But who will assign the just share to the two competitors? Will not he who does assign it be the true and only maker of history? And since he who does assign it cannot be man, we see once again how pragmatic leads directly to transcendency and irrationality through its naturalism. It leads to irrationality, accompanied by all its following of inconveniences and by all the other dualisms that it brings with it and which are particular aspects of itself, such as the impossibility of development, regressions, the triumph of evil. The individual, engaged with external forces however conceived, sometimes wins, at other times loses; his victory itself is precarious, and the enemy is always victorious, inflicting losses upon him and making his victories precarious. Individuals are ants crushed by a piece of rock, and if some ant escapes from the mass that falls upon it and reproduces the species, which begins again the labour from the beginning, the rock will fall, or always may fall, upon the new generation and may crush all of its members, so that it is the arbiter of the lives of the industrious ants, to which it does much injury and no good. This is as pessimistic a view as can be conceived.

These difficulties and vain-tentatives of pragmatic historiography have caused it to be looked upon with disfavour and to be rejected in favour of a superior conception, which preserves the initial humanistic motive and, removing from it the abstractness of the atomicized individual, assures it against any falling back into agnosticism, transcendency, or the despair caused by pessimism. The conception that has completed the criticism of pragmatic and the redemption of humanism has been variously and more or less well[Pg 100] formulated in the course of the history of thought as mind or reason that constructs history, as the 'providence' of mind or the 'astuteness' of reason.

The great value of this conception is that it changes humanism from abstract to concrete, from monadistic or atomistic to idealistic, from something barely human into something cosmic, from unhuman humanism, such as that of man shut up in himself and opposed to man, into humanism that is really human, the humanity common to men, indeed to the whole universe, which is all humanity, even in its most hidden recesses—that is to say, spirituality. And history, according to this conception, as it is no longer the work of nature or of an extra-mundane God, so it is not the impotent work of the empirical and unreal individual, interrupted at every moment, but the work of that individual which is truly real and is the eternal spirit individualizing itself. For this reason it has no adversary at all opposed to it, but every adversary is at the same time its subject —that is to say, is one of the aspects of that dialecticism which constitutes its inner being. Again, it does not seek its principle of explanation in a particular act of thought or will, or in a single individual or in a multitude of individuals, or in an event given as the cause of other events, or in a collection of events that form the cause of a single event, but seeks and places it in the process itself, which is born of thought and returns to thought, and is intelligible through the auto-intelligibility of thought, which never has need of appealing to anything external to itself in order to understand itself. The explanation of history becomes so truly, because it coincides with its explication; whereas explanation by means of abstract causes is a breaking up of the process; the living having been slain, there is a forced attempt[Pg 101] made to obtain life by setting the severed head again upon the shoulders.

When the historians of our day, and the many sensible folk who do not make a profession of philosophy, repeat that the history of the world does not depend upon the will of individuals, upon such accidents as the length of Cleopatra's nose, or upon anecdotes; that no historical event has ever been the result of deception or misunderstanding, but that all have been due to persuasion and necessity; that there is some one who has more intelligence than any individual whatever—the world; that the explanation of a fact is always to be sought in the entire organism and not in a single part torn from the other parts; that history could not have been developed otherwise than it has developed, and that it obeys its own iron logic; that every fact has its reason and that no individual is completely wrong; and numberless propositions of the same sort, which I have assembled promiscuously—they are perhaps not aware that with such henceforth obvious statements they are repeating the criticism of pragmatic history (and implicitly that of theological and naturalistic history) and affirming the truth of idealistic history. Were they aware of this, they would not mingle with these propositions others which are their direct contradiction, relating to causes, accidents, decadences, climates, races, and so on, which represent the detritus of the conception that has been superseded. For the rest, it is characteristic of the consciousness called common or vulgar to drag along with it an abundant detritus of old, dead concepts mingled with the new ones; but this does not detract from the importance of its enforced recognition of the new concept, which it substantially follows in its judgments.

[Pg 102]

Owing to the already mentioned resolution of all historiographical questions into general philosophy, it would not be possible to give copious illustrations of the new concept of history which the nineteenth century has accepted in place of the pragmatic conception without giving a lengthy exposition of general philosophy, which, in addition to the particular inconvenience its presence would have here, would lead to the repetition of things elsewhere explained. Taking the position that history is the work, not of the abstract individual, but of reason or providence, as admitted, I intend rather to correct an erroneous mode of expressing that doctrine which I believe that I have detected. I mean the form given to it by Vico and by Hegel, according to which Providence or Reason makes use of the particular ends and passions of men, in order to conduct them unconsciously to more lofty spiritual conditions, making use for this purpose of benevolent cunning.

Were this form exact, or were it necessary to take it literally (and not simply as an imaginative and provisional expression of the truth), I greatly fear that a shadow of dualism and transcendency would appear in the heart of the idealistic conception. For in this position of theirs toward the Idea or Providence, individuals would have to be considered, if not as deluded (satisfied indeed beyond their desires and hopes), then certainly as illuded, even though benevolently illuded. Individuals and Providence, or individuals and Reason, would not make one, but two; and the individual would be inferior and the Idea superior—that is to say, dualism and the reciprocal transcendency of God and the world would persist. This, on the other hand, would not be at variance from the historical point[Pg 103] of view with what has been several times observed as to the theological residue at the bottom of Hegel's, and yet more of Vico's, thought. Now the claim of the idealistic conception is that individual and Idea make one and not two—that is to say, perfectly coincide and are identified. For this reason, there must be no talking (save metaphorically) of the wisdom of the Idea and of the folly or illusion of individuals.

Nevertheless it seems indubitably certain that the individual acts through the medium of infinite illusions, proposing to himself ends that he fails to attain and attaining ends that he has not seen. Schopenhauer (imitating Hegel) has made popular the illusions of love, by means of which the will leads the individual to propagate the species; and we all know that illusions are not limited to those that men and women exercise toward one another (les tromperies réciproques), but that they enter into our every act, which is always accompanied by hopes and mirages that are not followed by realization. And the illusion of illusions seems to be this: that the individual believes himself to be toiling to live and to intensify his life more and more, whereas he is really toiling to die. He wishes to see his work completed as the affirmation of his life, and its completion is the passing away of the work; he toils to obtain peace in life, but peace is on the contrary death, which alone is peace. How then are we to deny this dualism between the illusion of the individual and the reality of the work, between the individual and the Idea? How are we to refute the only explanation which seems to compose in some measure the discord—namely, that the Idea turns the illusions of the individual to its own ends, even though this doctrine lead inevitably to a sort of transcendency of the Idea?

[Pg 104]

But the real truth is that what results from the observations and objections above exposed is not the illusion of the individual who loves, who tries to complete his work, who sighs for peace, but rather the illusion of him who believes that the individual is illuded: the illusory is the illusion itself. And this illusion appears in the phenomenology of the spirit as the result of the well-known abstractive process, which breaks up unity in an arbitrary manner and in this case separates the result from the process or actual acting, in which alone the former is real; the accompaniment from the accompanied, which is all one with the accompaniment, because there is not spirit and its escort, but only the one spirit in its development, the single moments of the process, of the continuity, which is their soul; and so on. That illusion arises in the individual when he begins to reflect upon himself, and at the beginning of that reflection, which is at the same time a dialectical process. But in concrete reflection, or rather in concrete consciousness, he discovers that there is no end that has not been realized, as well as it could, in the process, in which it was never an absolute end—that is to say, an abstract end, but both a means and an end.

To return to the popular theory of Schopenhauer, only he who looks upon men as animals, or worse than animals, can believe that love is a process that leads only to the biological propagation of the species, when every man knows that he fecundates his own soul above all prior to the marriage couch, and that images and thoughts and projects and actions are created before children and in addition to them. Certainly, we are conscious of the moments of an action as it develops—that is to say, of its passage and not of its totality seen in the light of a new spiritual situation, such as we strive to obtain[Pg 105] when, as we say, we leave the tumult behind us and set ourselves to write our own history. But there is no illusion, either now or then; neither now nor then is there the abstract individual face to face with a Providence who succeeds in deceiving him for beneficial ends, acting rather as a doctor than as a serious educator, and treating the race of men as though they were animals to train and make use of, instead of men to educate—that is to say, develop.

After having concentrated the mind upon a thought of Vico and of Hegel, can it be possible to set ourselves down to examine those of others which afford material to the controversies of historians and methodologists of history of our time? These represent the usual form in which appear the problems concerning the relation between the individual and the Idea, between pragmatic and idealistic history. Perhaps the patience necessary for the descent into low haunts is meritorious and our duty; perhaps there may be some useful conclusion to be drawn from these common disputes; but I must beg to be excused for not taking part in them and for limiting myself to the sole remark that the question which has been for some time discussed, whether history be the history of 'masses' or of 'individuals,' would be laughable in its very enunciation, if we were to understand by 'mass' what the word implies, a complex of individuals. And since it is not a good method to attribute laughable ideas to adversaries, it may be supposed that on this occasion what is meant by 'mass' is something else, which moves the mass of individuals. In this case, anyone can see that the problem is the same as that which has just been examined. The conflict between 'collectivistic' and 'individualistic' historiography will never be composed so long as the former[Pg 106] assigns to collectivity the power that is creative of ideas and institutions, and the latter assigns it to the individual of genius, for both affirmations are true in what they include and false in what they exclude—that is to say, not only in their exclusion of the opposed thesis, but also in the tacit exclusion, which they both make, of totality as idea.

A warning as to a historiographical method, so similar in appearance to that which I have been defending as to be confounded with it, may perhaps be more opportune. This method, which is variously called sociological, institutional, and of values, preserves among the variety of its content and the inequality of mental level noticeable in its supporters the general and constant characteristic of believing that true history consists of the history of societies, institutions, and human values, not of individual values. The history of individuals, according to this view, is excluded, as being a parallel or inferior history, and its inferiority is held to be due either to the slight degree of interest that it is capable of arousing or to its lack of intelligibility. In the latter case (by an inversion on this occasion of the attitude of contempt which was noted in pragmatic history) it is handed over to chronicle or romance. But in such dualism as this, and in the disagreement which persists owing to that dualism, lies the profound difference between the empirical and naturalistic conceptions of value, of institutions, and of societies, and the idealistic conception. This conception does not contemplate the establishment of an abstract history of the spirit, of the abstract universal, side by side with or beyond abstract individualistic or pragmatic history, but the understanding that individual and idea, taken separately, are two equivalent abstractions, each equally[Pg 107] unfitted for supplying its subject to history, and that true history is the history of the individual in so far as he is universal and of the universal in so far as individual. It is not a question of abolishing Pericles to the advantage of politics, or Plato to the advantage of philosophy, or Sophocles to the advantage of tragedy; but to think and to represent politics, philosophy, and tragedy as Pericles, Plato, and Sophocles, and these as each one of the others in one of their particular moments. Because if each one of these is the shadow of a dream outside its relation with the spirit, so likewise is the spirit outside its individualizations, and to attain to universality in the conception of history is to render both equally secure with that security which they mutually confer upon one another. Were the existence of Pericles, of Sophocles, and of Plato indifferent, would not the existence of the idea have for that very reason been pronounced indifferent? Let him who cuts individuals out of history but pay close attention and he will perceive that either he has not cut them out at all, as he imagined, or he has cut out with them history itself.