APPENDIX II ANALOGY AND ANOMALY OF SPECIAL HISTORIES

In the course of the preceding theoretical explanations we have denied both the idea of a universal history (in time and space)[1] and that of a general history (of the spirit in its indiscriminate generality or unity),[2] and have insisted instead upon the opposite view with its two clauses: that history is always particular and always special, and that these two determinations constitute precisely concrete and effective universality and concrete and effective unity. What has been declared impossible, then, does not represent in any way a loss, for it is on the one hand fictitious universality or the universality of fancy, and on the other abstract universality, or, if it be preferred, confused universality. So-called universal histories have therefore shown themselves to be particular histories, which have assumed that title for purposes of literary notoriety, or as collections, views, and chroniclistical compilations of particular histories, or, finally, as romances. In like manner, general inclusive histories are either so only in name, or set different histories side by side, or they are metaphysical and metaphorical playthings.

As a result of this double but converging negation, it is also advisable to refute a common and deeply rooted belief (which we ourselves at one time shared to some extent)[3] that we should arrive at the re-establishment of the universality of the fancy: or that there are some[Pg 142] among the special histories, constituted according to the various forms of the spirit (general and individual only in so far as every form of the spirit is the whole spirit in that form), which require universal treatment and others only treatment as monographs. The typical instance generally adduced is that of the difference between the history of philosophy and the history of poetry or of art. The subject of the former is supposed to be the one great philosophical problem that interests all men, of the latter the sentimental or imaginative problems of particular moments, or at the most of particular artists. Thus the former is supposed to be continuous, the latter discontinuous, the former capable of complete universal vision, the second only of a sequence of particular visions. But a more 'realistic' conception of philosophy deprives it of this privilege as compared with the history of art and poetry or of any other special history; for, appearances notwithstanding, it is not true that men have concentrated upon one philosophical problem only, whose successive solutions, less and less inadequate, compose a single line of progress, the universal history of the human spirit, affording support and unification to all other histories. The opposite is the truth: the philosophical problems that men have treated of and will treat of are infinite, and each one of them is always particularly and individually determined. The illusion as to the uniqueness of the problem is due to logical misapprehension, increased by historical contingencies, whence a problem which owing to religious motives seemed supreme has been looked upon as unique or fundamental, and groupings and generalizations made for practical ends have been held to be real identity and unity.[4] 'Universal'[Pg 143] histories of philosophy, too, like the others, when we examine them with a good magnifying glass, are revealed as either particular histories of the problem that engages the philosopher-historian, or arbitrary artificial constructions, or tables and collections of many different historical sequences, in the manner of a manual or encyclop?dia of philosophical history. Certainly nothing forbids the composition of abridgments of philosophical histories, containing classifications of particular problems and representing the principal thinkers of all peoples and of all times as occupied with one or another class of problem. This, however, is always a chroniclistical and naturalistic method of treating the history of philosophy, which only really lives when a new thinker connects the problems already set in the past and its intrinsic antecedents with the definite problem that occupies his attention. He provisionally sets aside others with a different connexion, though without for that reason suppressing them, intending rather to recall them when another problem makes their presence necessary. It is for this reason that even in those abridgments that seem to be the most complete and 'objective' (that is to say, 'material') a certain selection does appear, due to the theoretical interest of the writer, who never altogether ceases to be a historiographer-philosopher. The procedure is in fact just that of the history of art and poetry, where what is really historical treatment, living and complete, is the thought or criticism of individual poetical personalities, and the rest a table of criticisms, an abridgment due to contiguity of time or place, affinity of matter or similarity of temperament, or to degrees of artistic excellence. Nor must we say that every philosophic problem is linked to all the others and is always a problem of the whole of[Pg 144] philosophy, thus differing from the cases of poetry and art, for there is no diversity here either, and the whole of history and the entire universe are immanent in every single work of art.

Now that we have likewise reduced philosophies of history to the rank of particular histories, it is scarcely necessary to demonstrate that the demand being made in several quarters for a 'universal' or 'general' history of science is without foundation. For such a history would be impossible to write, even if we were able to identify or compare the history of science with chat of philosophy. But it is doubly impossible both because there are comprised under the name of 'science' such diverse forms as sciences of observation and mathematical sciences, and also because in each of these classes themselves the several disciplines remain separate, owing to the irreducible variety of data and postulates from which they spring. If, as we have pointed out, every particular philosophical problem links and places itself in harmony with all other philosophical problems, every scientific problem tends, on the contrary, to shut itself up in itself, and there is no more destructive tendency in science than that of 'explaining' all the facts by means of a 'single principle,' substituting, that is to say, an unfruitful metaphysic for fruitful science, allowing an empty word to act as a magic wand, and by 'explaining everything' to 'explain' nothing at all. The unity admitted by the history of the sciences is not that which connects one theory with another and one science with another in an imaginary general history of science, but that which connects each science and each theory with the intellectual and social complex of the moment in which it appeared. But even here too we must utter the warning[Pg 145] that in thus explaining their true nature we do not wish to contest the right to existence of tables and encyclop?dias of the history of science, far less to throw discredit upon the present direction of studies, by means of which, at the call of the history of the sciences, useful Research is stimulated in directions that have been long neglected. Nor do we intend to move any objection to histories of science in the form of tables and encyclop?dias on the ground that it is impossible for the same student to be equally competent as to problems of quite different nature, such as are those of the various sciences; for it is inconceivable that a philosopher exists with a capacity equal to the understanding of each and every philosophical problem (indeed, the mind of the best solver of certain problems is usually the more closed to others); or that a critic and historian of poetry and art exists who tastes and enjoys equally all forms of poetry and art, however versatile he be. Each one has his sphere marked out more or less narrowly, and each is universal only by means of his particularity.

Finally, we shall not repeat the same demonstration for political history and ethics, where the claim to represent the whole of history in a single line of development has had less occasion to manifest itself. It is usually more readily admitted there that every history is particular—that is to say, determined by the political and ethical problem or problems with which history is concerned in time and place, and which every history therefore occasionally rethinks from the beginning. The analogy, then, between different kinds of special history is to be considered perfect, and the anomaly between them excluded, for they all obey the principle of particularity, that is, particular universality (whatever be[Pg 146] the appearance to the contrary). But if, as histories, they all proceed according to the nature of what we have explained as historiography, in so far as they are special each one conforms to the concept of its speciality. It is in this sense alone that each one is anomalous in respect to the others, preserving, that is to say, its own peculiar nature. We have explained that the claim to treat the history of poetry and of art in the same way as philosophy is erroneous, not only because it misconceives the true concept of history, but also because it misrepresents the nature of art, conceiving it as philosophy and dissipating it in a dialectic of concepts, or because it leaves out, in the history of art, just that by reason of which art is art, looking upon it as something secondary, or at best giving it a place beside the social or conceptual activities. This error is precisely analogous to that of those who from time to time suggest what they term the 'psychological' reform of philosophy—that is to say, they would like to treat it as dependent upon the psychology of philosophers and of the social environment, thus placing it on a level, sometimes with the history of the sentiments, at others with that of fancies and Utopias, or with what is not the history of philosophizing. Such persons lack the knowledge of what philosophy is, as the others lack the knowledge of poetry and art. Anyone desirous of arriving at a rapid knowledge of the difference between the history of philosophy and the history of poetry should observe how the one, owing to the nature of its object, is led to examine theories in so far as they are the work of pure mind, and therefore to develop a history in which thoughts represent the dramatis person?, while the other is led by the nature of its object to examine works of art in so far as they are works of imagination, which[Pg 147] gives expression to movements of feeling, and therefore to develop a history of imaginative and sensitive points of view. The former, therefore, though it does not neglect actions, events, and imagination, regards them as the humus of pure thought and takes the form of a history of concepts without persons, either real or imaginary, while the latter, which also does not neglect actions, events, and thoughts in its turn regards them as the humus of imaginary creations and takes the form of a history of ideal or imaginary personalities, which have divested themselves of the ballast of practical interests and of the curb of concepts. The plans, too, which they draw up and with which they cannot dispense, any more than can any human dialectic, answer to these different tendencies—that is to say, with the one they are schemes or general types of modes of thinking, with the other schemes containing ideal personalities.

If the history of philosophy has several times tried to devour the history of poetry and art, it may also be said to have several times tried to devour the history of practice, that of politics and ethics, or 'social history,' as people prefer to call it in our day. It has also been asserted that such history should be set free from the chroniclism in which it had become involved and assume a scientific and rigorous form. To do this, it was heedful to reduce it to a history of 'ideas,' which are the true and essential practical acts, because they generate them—that is to say, the error which we noted above in respect to poetry and art has here been repeated. What is peculiar to practical acts has been neglected, and only the 'ideas,' which are their antecedents and consequents, have been retained. But on other occasions the 'ideas' to which it was claimed to reduce practical acts were not really ideas or intellectual formations, but truly practical[Pg 148] acts, sentiments, dispositions, customs, institutions. The originality of political and ethical history was thus unconsciously confirmed. Its object is just what can be designated with the single word institutions, taking the word in its widest signification—that is to say, understanding by it all practical arrangements of human individuals and societies, from the most recondite sentiments to the most obvious modes of life (which, too, are always will in action). All are equally historical productions, the sole effective historical productions perceivable according to the practical form of the spirit. If the patrimony of judgments, as the capital with and upon which our modern thought works, is the result of a long history, of which we become conscious from time to time, illustrating now one and now another of its particular aspects at the solicitation of new needs, so also what we can now practically do, all our sentiments as so-called civilized men—courage, honour, dignity, love, modesty, and the like—all our institutions in the strict sense of the term (which are themselves due to attitudes of the spirit, utilitarian or moral)—the family, the state, commerce, industry, military affairs, and so on—have a long history; and according as one or other of those sentiments or institutions enters upon a crisis, as the result of new wants, we attempt to ascertain its true 'nature'—that is to say, its historical genesis. Anyone who has followed the developments of modern social historiography with care and attention has been able to see clearly that its aim is precisely to arrange the chroniclistic chaos of disaggregated notes of events in ordered series of histories of social values, and that its field of research is the history of the human soul in its practical aspect; either when it produces general histories of civilization (always due to particular motives[Pg 149] and limited by them), or when it presents histories of classes, peoples, social currents, sentiments, institutions, and so forth.

Biography, too (only when not limited to a mere chroniclistic collection of the experiences of an individual or to a poetical portrait, improperly regarded as a historical work), is the history of an 'institution' in the philosophical acceptation of the word and forms part of the history of practice: because the individual, in the same way as a people or a social class, is the formation of a character, or complex of specific attitudes and actions consequent upon them; and it is of this that historical biography consists, not of the individual looked upon as external or private or physical, or whatever it be called.

We might be expected to indicate the place or function of the history of science and of religion, in order to render to a certain extent complete this rapid review of special histories, in which general history realizes itself in turn—it never exists outside of them. But if science differs from philosophy in being partly theoretical and partly practical, and religion is an attempt to explain reality by means of myth and to direct the work of man according to an ideal, it is evident that the history of science enters to some extent into the history of philosophical thought and to some extent forms part of that of needs and institutions; indeed, since the moment which sets science to work and endows it with its peculiar character is the practical or suitable moment, it really belongs to the history of institutions in the very wide sense described; and the history of religion forms to some extent part of the history of institutions and to some extent part of the history of philosophy; indeed, since the dominating moment is here mythical conception or[Pg 150] philosophical effort, the history of religion is substantially that of philosophy. Other more particular disquisitions in connexion with this argument would be out of place in the present treatise, which is not especially concerned with the theory and methodology of particular special histories (coincident with the treatment of the various spheres of philosophy, ?sthetics, logic, etc.), and aims only at indicating the directions in which they must necessarily develop.[5]

[1] Supra, pp. 55-59.

[2] Supra, pp. 119-122.

[3] In the ?sthetic, I, ch. xvii.

[4] See Appendix III.

[5] It will be of further use to draw attention here, in a note, to the already mentioned distinction between the history of practice in politics and in ethics, because thus alone can be set at rest the variance which runs through historiography, between political history or history of states and history of humanity or of civilization, especially from the eighteenth century onward. In Germany it is one of the elements in the intricate debate between Geschichte and Kulturgeschichte, and it has sometimes been described as a conflict between French historiography (Voltaire and his followers), or histoire de la civilisation, and the Germanic (M?ser and his followers), or history of the state. One side would absorb and subject the history of culture or social history to that of the state, the other would do the opposite; and the eclectics, as usual, without knowing much about it, place the one beside the other, inert, history of politics and history of civilization, thus destroying the unity of history. The truth is that political history and history of civilization have the same relations between one another in the practical field as those between the history of poetry or of art and the history of philosophy or thought in the theoretical field. They correspond to two eternal moments of the spirit—that of the pure will, or economic moment, and that of the ethical will. Hence we also see why some will always be attracted rather by the one than the other form of history: according as to whether they are moved chiefly by political or chiefly by moral interests.