1 5. 1. Nicolas Poussin, -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ©.W. Kolbe, Etin Arcadia ego’. Etching 6. B, Ciriani Bt in Acadia eg. Engraving ater an ‘unidentified painting allo della Vita Humane’, London, Wallace Collection 5 Nicolas Poussin, Phaeton before Helios. Bertin, Kaiser- Friedrich-Muscums : ica Pouin, The Realm of Fae, Deeden,Gemalde- salerie Paul Bei, Roman Landsape, Dresden, Gemaldeglerie Nicolas Poussin, Nativity, Dresden, Gemaldegalerie Aston Watiea,'LesChamps Ei, London, Wallace Collection Antoine Wattenu, Gilles. Pris, Muse du Louvre Antoine Watteau, SellPortrait, Drawing. Private tection, Socing p- 240 ap ar at os 45 a 250 21 252 * DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY By JOHAN wurz! eA AS 22 definition must be sucinct i. it mast witht est possible conciseness of expression accurascly a com)’ ly establish the concept, A definition dolimits ¢ meat; of particular word which serves to indicate a partic lar p»omenon, In the definition the phenoraenon as must. included and comprehended. Should any esser part: |! outside of the definition, there is something wrot with On the other hand, a definition need give no accou of de: is. Le. ss bring to the test of these requi curr. + definitions of the concept of history, Mos: worss 1 episte, ology of history refrain from an ex; of the cundamental concept, They take the phenositcnon isi as a known quantity. Definitions are most reacily found + manuo|s oF text-books of historical methed. 1 two of these: E. Bernheim’s well-known Letrbuch zs- Metho ' wad der Geschichtsphilosephie, and the mo: concis. work of W. Bauer, Einftihrung in das Stu schich Ber, heim’s definition in the frst edition of his book (:885) reads as follows: ‘History is the science of the dev mankind in their activity as social beings,’ Shortly there began the Lely controversy, stewed up boy Larmpeeel about the nature of historical knowledge. This led Bernhei in the third edition of his work (the second dates fom 1892 to express in the definition his attitude towards the questinns which were in the air. Accordingly, in the edition num 3[4, of the year 1903, this reads as follows: "The science of history is the science which investigates and narrates in cava} connexion the facts of the development of mankind in their activities (individual as well as typical and coilective) as soci! beings.’ In the edition numbered 5/6, of 1908, “the facts’ a further particularized as ‘the facts in their temporal and spat us single ont * Second improved, etion, Tubingen, 1928, The fest appeased is 102, ee eccennmnneatcamnem mean nieeRes.8 . A DEFINITION OF THE in the sense that the past can only become history for this soup in so far as it is intelligible to it. Civilizations whose out- Took is limited or narrow produce a history which is likewise Limited and narrow, and contrariwise those whose horizon is wide give rise to a history able to understand a wide range of diversity and even contrast. Tt is the essence of a civilization that whatever its intellect conceives becomes @ part of it. This retains its validity even ifthe extraneous material compre hend=d attracts the mind, and is understood, just as being strange, different, antithetic. ‘The Merovingian civilization still saw a small part of antiquity at the closest range, but in a dim light. This was the best part of its own civilization, Each subsequent epoch conceived antiquity ever anew with wider and deeper insight: the ninth century, the vwelfth, the four- teenth; and in each case antiquity became in a more essential sense a part of its own growing civilization. For us, both classi« cal antiquity—deciphered ever anew—and the ancient and the more recent East, the and through the understanding of their meaning which we bring to. their study, This point of view has been criticized as an overstraining of the concept of civilization. Still, after think- ing it over again, I must hold to it as expressing a fundamental truth which all our thinking leads up to. Any one who is shocked by the boldness of the statement may interpret it so as to fit into the system of his own convictions. Our civilization is the first to have for its past the past of the world, our history isthe fist to be world-history. Even the most minute research into local antiquities partakes in the whole and gets its meaning by this participation, But besides that it is something more. A history adequate to our civilization can only be scientific history. The instrament of modern Western civilization for the intellectual understand- ing of the world is critical science. We cannot sacrifice the demand for scientific certainty without injury to the conscience of our civilization, Mythical and fictitious representations of the past may have literary value for us even now as forms of play, but for us they are not history. * Compare Th. Lit, Wesechaf Bilding, Weltnchaweng, pp. 97 CONCEPT OF HISTORY s Ti inet definition at which we have thus arrived would yea Suwa Hi. the intellectual form in which a civiligation renders accoun! bb Fofits past Its . 2 pethaps so simple, 50 self-evident, that one is re- sainde (the Dutch proverb: ‘The soup is not worth the cabba,. "Simplicity, however, cannot be called a defect in a definit’, \, provided that everything essential to the phenomenon is expe ed. We have still to examine our definition, analysed into its -parate terms, somewhat more closely, in order to see wheth: °: satisfies the last-named requirement, Histc is here qualified as ‘an intellectual form’, This design: 0 is both wider than ‘a science’, which it includes, and mo precise, inasmuch as it formulates the essence of the phenon aon itself. If we call history an intellectual form, we are reli ed of the forced and disturbing distinction between historical research and historiography, and we likewise escape the irrelevant question how fac history has anything in common with art As the subject in which this form becomes conscious, we have named ‘a civilization’. Every civilization creates this form anew, according to its own peculiar style. By using the term “a civilization’ we admit all the unavoidable subjectivity implied in every history. Further, inasmuch as within the same civiiza- tion every group which is united by a particular Weltanschauing Tepresents a sectional civilization of its own, it is admitted at the same time that a Catholic history must look different from a Socialist one, &c. Every civilization and every sectional Civilization must hold its own history to be the true one, and is entitled to do so, provided that it constructs this Ristory in accordance with the critical requirements imposed by its cons Science as a civilization, and not according to the cravings for ower in the interests of which it imposes silence upom this conscience. It is the doubtful privilege of our scientific civiliza. tion of to-day to be for the first time able the possible plurality of the forms of history. If it has sufficient self-knowledge, it can unhesitatingly assert the relative value of its own intellectual product, The kind of intellectual activity from which history takes its rise is described as a ‘rendering account to oneself", This expression bridges once again the gulf between research and com- consciously to survey2 A DEFINITION OF THE ‘determinations’, while instead of ‘in causal connexion’ we now sead ‘in relations of paytho-physical cansality’. Bauer's definition’ is as follows: ‘History is the science which seeks to destribe and with sympathetic insight (nachfttlend) to explain the phenomena of life, so fas as concerns changes yrought about by the relation of men to society,? selecting them with an eye to their effect on subsequent epochs or with egard to their typical qualities, and concentrating chiefly on hhose changes which are temporally and spatially irreprodu- ible In spite of the abbreviation to which it has been subjected. since its first formulation, the succinctness of Bauer's definition s not striking; and it snay be doubted whether the solicitude with which a short account of methodology is interpolated into he definition makes up for this defect. A more serious objec- tion, which tells against both authors, lies in the fact that Bauer as well as Bernheim restricts in advance the range of the word “nistory’. Bernheim, in defining the concept, expressly concerns himself solely with “the science of histocy’, with history a8 a science. This agrees with his doctrine that history passes suc~ ceszively through the phases of the narrative (descriptive) and the pragmatic or didactic form, before attaining in the third phase, which he calls the genetic or evolutionary, its genuine Character as a science, Whether the tripartite division outlined by this high authority is in all respects satisfactory is not here in question, Indeed, for Bernheim, because of this division of his, the question whether the products of early and outgrown phases of historical study answer to his definition may be a matter of less significance. Bauer starts out from the word ‘history’, but immediately lays it down that it isa ‘science’, The account which he goes on to give of its function and essence concerns, in fact, just a8 much as that of Bernheim, the function and essence of modern historical science. Bauer himself, however, recognizes this restriction of the validity of his definition, and closes with the remark: ‘Every epoch, in fact, has its peculiar conception of the essence and "See. city 17. With the qualifying claus, ‘without lying undue ses on the vil of enon of the concept of hiker)" See tee ao for some other txamples of defiiions fh the Siem of r031: "to human society » Fes edition the irepredueilevingulancy of which i given in tne fact that ley are dtinguished by correlation witha particular time ands partcalae pce CONCEPT OF HISTORY fanction of history.’ But if the word ‘history’ possesses neve theless a more general sense, it must still be possible so to defi Stas to make it express the conception of every epoch. In respect to the use of the word, English occupies a peculiar position compared with German and Dutch and a French. To the word Geschichte, Gesekiedenis, in the two form languages, the following may ‘be said to apply: it sugge (1) something that has happened; (2) the narration of som thing that has happened; (3) the science which endeavours be able to give this narrative. In common usage the seco: sense may fairly be said to predominate, The first has now days all but disappeared; Geschichte ot Geschiedenis, in the sen. of ‘something that has happened’, has been replaced by ¢ equivalent Gechehnis or Gebeurtenis. A trace of it survives such phrases as das ist mir cine schéne Geschichte, Mateaver, both languages the word Historie occupies a secondary plac, with nearly the same double or even threefold meaning. Th French sistoiz, too, coincides almost completely with it. Ir English, on the other hand, the Romance historia has becom story, which, however, occupies only the sphere of meaning (2 ‘the ‘narration of something that has happened’. Moreover, was only later on that technical terminology, borrowing afres from the language of the learned, introduced the word history In its predominantly technical application, the word stand closer to the original Greek, which meant precisely ‘that whici ‘we come to know as a result of inquicy’. In another respect too English is different, inasmuch as history has retained more deti- nitely and for longer the more general meaning, in which the relation to the past is not essential. Erench hes it still in histoie raturelie; English works about 1800 still constantly have history jn the title in a much wider sense. Now, whether we use one name for history of another, 9s soon as we lay the emphasis on its character as a science," ic follows at once that most of the great historiographers of former times can only constrainedly be brought under the given defini- tions. If the definition of Bernheim or Bauer is applied to ¥ In the old aystem ofthe seiences history never occupied an independent place There ws, however, by way of compensation, # Mave af Sistory. Seloperha lll cont, td her contpeteney af a tcience. Jn England even to-day 2 de fe valve of history, If not necessary, is qewerieless spprop Wataon, les or ihe Sty of Contemporary Ito, inthe periodic i tg2al4 A DEFINITION OF THE Herodotus, Gregory of Tours, Joinville, Villani, Michelet, or Macaulay, itis difficult to suppress a fecling of uneasiness, It seems impossible, without a more or less violent anachronism, to find the tefinition verified in all these historians; and it does not help us that certain other personalities, like Thucydides and Machiavelli, can rather more readily be brought into accord with it. In’order to be able to sustain the definition, we find ourselves constrained first ofall to draw a fatal and impossible distinction between historiography, historical research, and his- torical refiection, and then to banish the great historiography cof the past, like Hagar, from the house of science. Finally, if any one draws the conclusion that this mus! be done, because historiography is properly speaking an art, then the confusion of ideas is complete, Even if it happened that every historical fact, no matter how or by whom described, could with a little good will be brought into accord with the categories set up by Bernheim and Bauer, the aspiration by which human nature is driven to history is in no way comprehended in theic defiaition. What does Heradatus relate, and why does he relate it? To this neither definition gives any answer. A grasp of historical facts, be they great events or small details, is aspired to neither in the connexion nor for the sake of the connexion which the definitions presuppose as cssential to history. Would it not be worth while to seek for a delimitation of the concept of history which does without the distinction between historical science and historiography, and is able to comprehend also the earlier phases of history and recognize them in their full value? Tt is, of course, questionable whether such a defini- tion will have any practical utility for our science; but that is jot the chief point; the main thing is to get the concept clear, The starting-point of both the definitions to which we have JM, sofeered is history as 2 modern science, and they determine the essence of this concept in accordance with the requirements linposed by this restricted connotation. Let us take up the problem from quite a different side and begin with history as & phenomenon of civilization; let us ask what is the constant form and function of this phenomenon. Whether the definition su reached applies to our modern scicnce will then only come into consideration as a final test In order to understand correctly the form and function of the CONCEPT: OF HISTORY ph. s.senon of history, itis necessary first ofall to free ourselv fie... naive historical realism which represents the init at’ de of educated men in general and no less of a great ma hy. dans. Asa sule it is supposed that history strives to rela the ory of the past, even if it is in the restricted sense of Be: he cand Bauer. In reality history gives no more than a partic lar cepresentation of a particular past, an intelligible picture of a portion of the past. It is never the reconstruction or reproduc- tion of 3 given past. No past is ever given. Tradition alone is given. If tradition were at any point to make the total reality of the past accessible to us, still no history would result; or rather, then least of all. The idea of history only emerges with the search for certain connexions, the essence of which is determined by the value which we attach to them, Tt makes no difference whether we think of a history which is the result of researches strictly critical in method, or of sagas and epir belonging to former phases of civilization. History is always an imposition of form upon the past, anc cannot claim to be more. It is always the comprehension and, interpretation of a meaning which we look for in the past Even mere narration is already the communication of a mean- ing, and the assimilation of this meaning may be of a semi aesthetic nature. It would be a misunderstanding to believe that the recogni tion of these facts opens the door to historical scepticism. All hhitorical scepticism, which thinks litdle of knowledge thus acquired, must end in a general philosophical scepticism, from which neither life itself, nor any science, even the most exact, would be exempt. If history as an intellectual activity is an imposition of form, then we may say that as a product it is a form—an intellectual form for understanding the world, just as philosophy, literature, Jurisprudence, physical science, are forms for understanding the World. History i distinguished from these other intellectual forms in that itis related to the past and nothing but the past." Tis purpose is to understand the world in and through the past ‘The intellectual fascination which underlies the form of history fs the desire to understand the meaning of that which has hap- pened in former times, The mind is attracted, engrossed by the "Needless to say, many of the natural sciences eogtain alo an important bistorical element, for instance, geology.6 __ A DEFINITION OF THE past, ‘The impetus and value of this mental tension and of its product, history, lie in the complete earnestness which distin fuishes it, ‘There is an absolute craving to penetrate to the genuine knowledge of that which truly happened, even when wwe are aware of the inadequacy of the means to the end. The sharp distinction between history and literature lies in the fact that the former is almost entirely lacking in that element of play which underlies literature from beginning to end, Tn such terms ag these we can speak in the same breath of historiography and historical research, of the writers of their own memoirs and of students of the most remote past, of the local annalist and of the designer of an histarical carmalogy, of the most primitive and the most modern historical efforts. ‘The attitude taken up by history in respect to the past may be most appropriately called ‘a rendering account to.oneself?. | ‘This expression conveys the complete earnest 7 tioned, the need for authenticity and reliability in knowledge. Besides, it is adapted to eliminate the apparent contrast between a narrative, a didactic, and a scientific treatment of history, which Bernheim postulates as being essential. "To render ac- ‘count to oneself of” includes all three of these endeavours. Finally, the term "to render account to oneself” implies that this must be carried out under the headings which are decisive, massgebend, for the historical worker himself. The events which we wish to explain in their connexion may be conceived under the antitheses of virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, friend and foe, might and right, order and freedom, interests and ideals, will and limitation, the individual and the mass, and in each case a difference of structure in the history which is described will be the result. Every man renders account to himself of the past in accordance with the standards which his education and Weltanschewing lead him to adopt. This, of course, does not mean that every one of these antithescs is capable of producing an equally trustworthy historical result. It remains for us to establish who renders account to himself, and of what. To the question about the subject which concerns itself with history, the answer is implicit in what has just been said. It can only be a civilization, inasmuch as that word is best \dapted to indicate the idea! cotalities of social life and ereative sctivity realized in a definite time and place which for our think- CONCEPT OF HISTORY 3 ing «vate the usits in the historical life of mankind. We are «| «to speak of a civilization, no less than of a people, soc as a thinking subject, without falling by the use of this n phot into the grote anthropomerphism which consti. tutes o's of the chief dangers to historical thought. Moreover, itis ho. diy necessary to define the concept of civilization more precisely than has just been done, until we employ the word as a tern: in a definition. Every civilization creates its own fornt of history, and must do so, The character of the civilization determines what history shall mean to it, and of what kind it shall lie, If a civilization coincides with a people, a state, a tribe, 1's history will be correspondingly simple. If a general civiliz. ion is differentiated into distinct nations, and these again into gioups, classes, parties, the corresponding differentiation in the historical form follows of itself! ‘The historical interests of every sectional civilization are determined by the question: what are the things which ‘matter’ to it? Civilization has mean- ing only as a process of adaptation to an ends it isa telealogical concept, as history is an explicitly purposive knowing. But this differentiation of historical insight can only be scien- fie, and consequently the corresponding historical product can * only be convincing to the critical modern mind, in so far as the craving for historical truth is inspired by the highest aim which the carrier of the civilization, in virtue of its moral and intellec- tual faculties, is able to conceive. The power of a people or of a state is t00 limited and too obscure an aim. That it could be necessary to point this out in so many words had not yet occurred to me six years ago when the first version of this essay was written, In this way the object of history also can be more precisely indicated. We have already said: the past, without further Particularization, means merely chaos, ‘The subject-matrer of history too requires further explatiation. The past is limited always in accordance with the kind of subject which secks to understand it, Every civilization has a past ofits own. This does not, however, hold in the sense that this past is bounded by the destiny of the group which is the carrier of the civilization but * On this consequence for the humane sciences in general, see the paper by Eduard: Sprenger, Der Sinn de Veausdzognghat m den Cevtnuseenicion, ead atthe ‘seeing of the philstophical and historical sctie of the Pee Academy of ‘siences, 10 January, 1926,