History and Sociology in France

In the late 19th century and early part of the 20th, with the coming of age
of sociology in France, the idea that there could be a “science” of history
was the subject of much and varied debate. The methodological problems
surrounding historical knowledge that were debated throughout this period
concerned not only scientific history, but the social sciences as well, and
sociology more specifically.
Although sociology was from its origins in competition with the disci-
pline of history, from the outset, it too was interested in history as a form of
objective knowledge. Many of sociology’s founders believed that by retrac-
ing historical processes, they could make a clean break with abstraction and
metaphysics. For their part, historians generally remained hostile to any kind
of systematization. And yet, at the end of the 19th century, the science of his-
tory would draw some valuable lessons from the emerging methodology of
sociology. It was in large part under the impetus of the issues and problems
raised by the philosopher Henri Berr and by the Durkheimian School, with
the economist François Simiand as its lead protagonist, that the community
of historians, increasingly aware of the limits of narrative history, turned so
enthusiastically to social and economic history—just as Durkheim and his
disciples consulted history in order to avoid the twin pitfalls of the philoso-
phy of history and of introspective psychology. History and Sociology in
France focuses on this dialogue of the two neighboring sciences.

Robert Leroux is a professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa.

Routledge Approaches to History
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

15 Theoretical Perspectives on Historians’ Autobiographies

From Documentation to Intervention
Jaume Aurell

16 How History Works

The Reconstitution of a Human Science
Martin L. Davies

17 History, Ethics, and the Recognition of the Other

A Levinasian View on the Writing of History
Anton Froeyman

18 The Historiography of Transition

Critical Phases in the Development of Modernity (1494–1973)
Edited by Paolo Pombeni

19 The Emergence of Historical Forensic Expertise

Clio Takes the Stand
Vladimir Petrović

20 Historical Mechanisms
An Experimental Approach to Applying Scientific Theories to the
Study of History
Andreas Boldt

21 Values, Objectivity, and Explanation in Historiography

Tor Egil Førland

22 The Work of History

Constructivism and a Politics of the Past
Kalle Pihlainen

23 History and Sociology in France

From Scientific History to the Durkheimian School
Robert Leroux
History and Sociology
in France
From Scientific History to
the Durkheimian School

Robert Leroux
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Pour Émile Leroux,
mon fils
Contents

Introduction 1

PART I
The Idea of Scientific History 11

1 History and the Social Sciences 13

Auguste Comte: The Progress of the Human
Intelligence 14
Antoine Augustin Cournot: Between Chance
and Necessity 16
Ernest Renan: In Praise of Science 19
Hippolyte Taine: Applying the Scientific Model
of Natural Sciences to History 21
The Ramifications of Positivism 24

2 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 31

Fustel de Coulanges and the Beginnings of
Scientific History 32
The Positivism of Louis Bourdeau 40
The Historical Sociology of Paul Lacombe 47
Langlois and Seignobos: The Argument for Historical Method 52
Between the Hero and the Masses 59

PART II
Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis 67

3 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 69

Constructing Synthesis 70
Historical Synthesis and Sociology 81
The History Chair at the Collège de France: Moving
on From Failure 83
viii Contents
4 Henri Berr, the Organizer and Promoter of Synthesis 87
Objectives of the Revue de Synthèse Historique 87
The Dialogue Between Historical Synthesis and
Sociology 89
A Historical Encyclopedia: The Évolution
de l’Humanité 92

PART III
The Durkheimian School and History 99

5 The Durkheimian School and History 101

History as an Auxiliary Science: Émile Durkheim 103
A Heterodox Durkheimian: Célestin Bouglé 111
The Polemist and the Social Scientist: François
Simiand 119
A Theory of Collective Memory: Maurice Halbwachs 135

Conclusion 149

Bibliography 157
Index 175
Introduction

In the last decades of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, with
the coming of age of sociology in France, the idea that there could be a
“science” of history was the subject of much and varied debate. The many
facets of both the confrontation and the collaboration between history and
sociology are well known, but they have yet to be the subject of systematic
study. From the viewpoint of the history of ideas, this is a gap that deserves
attempts to fill it.
Toward the middle of the 19th century, the discipline of history entered a
decisive phase in its evolution. Striving to break with the romantic tradition,
it sought to endow itself with scientific legitimacy. Historians were led for the
first time to debate fundamental questions: what are the conditions for a sci-
entific approach to history? What is its objective? Can we identify laws of his-
tory? Must history, conceived scientifically, adhere to the model of the natural
sciences? In such questions we can discern the beginnings of a dialogue, and
certainly the onset of long and lively polemics. Yet, while the community of
historians was divided over a number of methodological issues, it was quick
to circle the wagons against metaphysical interpretations of humanity’s fate.
Surely it is not illegitimate to see this rejection—at least theoretical—of meta-
physics as one of the defining characteristics of “scientific history”.
The many methodological problems surrounding historical knowledge
that were debated throughout the second half of the 19th century were
still fully current at the beginning of the 20th century. They concerned not
only scientific history but the social sciences as well, and sociology more
specifically.
Although from its origins, sociology was in competition with the disci-
pline of history, it is no surprise that from the outset, it too was interested in
history as a form of objective knowledge. Among the founders of sociology,
there were many who believed that by retracing historical processes, they
could make a clean break with abstraction and metaphysics. Of course, that
was all an illusion. Thus, Auguste Comte, far from abandoning metaphysics
for history, plunged into it all the more avidly. His law of the three states is a
vibrant illustration. Between Comte and the historians of his time, dialogue
was virtually impossible. As we shall see, Comte, the father of positivism,
2 Introduction
wrote caustic pages against the individualistic atomism of the historian,
while historians such as Fustel de Coulanges remained hostile to any kind of
systematization. Here, we are touching a crucial point. And yet, the science
of history would draw some valuable lessons from the methodology of soci-
ology which was emerging at the time. It was in large part under the impetus
of the issues and problems raised by the philosopher Henri Berr and by the
Durkheimian School, with the economist François Simiand as its lead pro-
tagonist, that the community of historians, increasingly aware of the limits of
narrative history, turned so enthusiastically to social and economic history—
just as Émile Durkheim and his disciples consulted history in order to avoid
the twin pitfalls of the philosophy of history and of introspective psychology.
It is this dialogue of the two neighboring sciences, which are often in com-
petition because their objectives are so similar, that is the focus of this book.

The Problem of Scientific History: From Romanticism

to Positivism
Whether under the sway of romanticism or of positivism, the popularity of
historical studies never flagged during the greater part of the 19th century.
The influence of the French Revolution was particularly important in the
development of historiography, even though it was not immediate. In fact,
in the first years following that upheaval, history was largely marginalized
and was of little concern to the intellectual community. Thus, during the
first two or three decades of the 19th century, there were very few histori-
ans: “At that time people were living in the present without planning for the
future and without worrying much about the past”.1 A historic fact if there
ever was one, the French Revolution was, paradoxically, the main root of
this mistrust of history; it “devalued the past; taking itself as a brand-new
beginning, it simply forgot about the past”.2 The Revolution dug a deep
trench between two adjacent centuries, and it made “people of the 19th
century feel themselves strangers to those of the 18th century”; it also gave
them “a true historical sense”, and helped to “awaken historians to their
calling”. In short, it “dragged people into history”.3 In the collective mem-
ory, time was now divided into “before” and “after” 1789. “The tremen-
dous upheavals that marked the end of the 18th century”, remarks the Swiss
historian Jacob Burkhardt, “compel us by their very nature, and beyond any
sense of partisanship, to study what happened before and what came after
[. . .] Only by considering the past can we readily measure the strength of the
movement in which we are now caught up”.4 The revolutionary events of
1830 once again revealed the need to cultivate memory. As of that moment,
interest in history began to grow irreversibly. “The revolution of 1830”,
writes Camille Jullian,5 “was seen by historians as their victory. In those
heady days, Jules Michelet saw at last “a nation”; he saw “la France”.6 In
that time of turmoil, Augustin Thierry called out enthusiastically to “plant
the flag of historical reform for the France of the 19th century”.7
 Introduction 3
From the outset, this rebirth of history seemed to be dominated by a
romanticism that dictated its lines of conduct.8 This literary form, essentially
bourgeois, infused historical discussion for at least three or four decades.
Generally speaking, what interested the romantic historian was not so much
the truth of the facts but the manner of telling them. If the historian quickly
became a slave to style and form, he was just as thoroughly shackled by his
emotions, his sentimental attachments, and his particular tastes. We may
take Michelet as the embodiment of the romantic historian. Here was a man
who was deeply troubled and agitated. He let himself be carried away by
his imagination, by his joys and sorrows, by his worries. He saw in France
a nation, a “person”; he delved into its deepest secrets, he was its lover.9
This enthusiasm, this intoxication with the past, was no passing thing:
it endured throughout the century. But after the fall of the Second Empire,
history had to change. Romantic history was thoroughly discredited.
Positivism, in its various guises, sounded the death knell for romanticism
and every kind of literary artifice.
In the middle of the 19th century, the boundary between romanticism and
positivism became more clearly established. The romantic style fell into dis-
use. In theory, the “positivist” historian was hostile to the idea of entertain-
ing any sympathy for his subject; his writing must not betray any passion. In
fact, he regarded metaphysics, value judgments and speculation as suspect
and inappropriate. The facts alone must serve as his guide. The “positivist”
historian set himself a task: to observe the facts “as they really happened”—
or wie es eigenlich gewesen ist, as Leopold von Ranke put it from the other
side of the Rhine.10 For many historians, this formula became a powerful
axiom. For more than half a century, much of French historiography would
insist on the virtues of a neutral and impartial history where the historian
would have no other function than to kneel humbly before empirical reality.
In this context, some historians came to see written documentation as
the key factor in the definition of “scientific” history. The document sup-
ported the historian’s argument, and it served to demarcate history from the
philosophy of history. With the aid of the document, history could at last
claim to be an objective science. Langlois and Seignobos, two of the most
important historians of the end of the 19th century, carried this reasoning
to its absolute limits.
But Fustel de Coulanges had already pointed the way for them several
decades earlier. Not only did he see history as a science, he insisted that it
was a “pure science”. In his concept, history could entertain great ambi-
tions. In principle, everything is history. History is not “just another sci-
ence”; it is the mother of all social sciences. The written document ensures
its neutrality and gives it the detachment that any scientific investigation
demands. “No documents, no history”—this was the battle cry that many
historians would raise.
For the young director of the Revue historique, Gabriel Monod, the
document was a guarantee against any temptation to interpret history by
4 Introduction
appealing to supernatural or metaphysical causes. In his famous method-
ological program of 1876, Monod, who had a great influence on scientific
historians of the next generation like Ernest Lavisse, Charles Seignobos,
Camille Jullian etc., declares war on systems of thought and becomes an
apologist for history as science. “We have recognized the danger of prema-
ture generalizations, of grand a priori schemes that claim to embrace every-
thing and explain it all”.11 And he adds, “the development of the positive
sciences, which is the distinctive feature of our century, must surely include,
in the field that we call literary, the development of history, the purpose of
which is to submit all the manifestations of the human being to scientific
knowledge and indeed to scientific laws”.12 We find a similar view in the
first volume of the Revue des questions historiques, a royalist and Catholic
journal founded by Gaston du Fresne de Beaucourt: historical scholarship
must be pursued “without passion, without partisanship, with the sole aim
of seeking the truth and telling it”.13
But objectivity is not always a prime feature of historical positivism or of
positivism in general. Nowhere in the works of Hippolyte Taine and Ernest
Renan, despite their intimate association with positivism, will we find a nar-
row quest for objectivity. In fact, these theorists were steadfast promoters
of a science of history that fell within the bounds of art and science, where
the historian was an accessory to history. The historian makes history, and
he is its product. But above all, the historian is an artist: his emotions enter
freely into play, and they shape his interpretation of the past. In the work
of Taine and Renan, the historical discipline has not yet broken with its
romantic background. History is not merely a scientific discipline, it is an
art, and above all, a faith.
As will already be clear, and despite the intent of many of its enthusi-
asts, “positivist” history was not completely free of philosophy, nor did it
renounce systematization. For some, like the historian and sociologist Paul
Lacombe, history would become scientific only when it had established laws
explaining human behavior. History, he said, should show how people try to
meet their psychological and biological needs through institutions. Others,
like Louis Bourdeau, citing the theories of Auguste Comte, attempted to
explain the irreversible progress of human intelligence. According to
Bourdeau, as we shall see, history was the science of reason.
In the face of these conflicting perspectives, it is difficult at first glance
to form a general idea of what has been called—wrongly and without any
attempt at precision—“historical positivism”.

The Many Meanings and Ambiguities of the Notion

of “Historical Positivism”
Given the diversity of viewpoints that it covers, the term “historical positiv-
ism” is ripe for misunderstanding.14 Until recently, it was rarely thought
necessary to define the concept. Guy Bourdé and Hervé Martin insist that
 Introduction 5
“it was and remains a mistake to say that the historical school that took
root in France between 1880 and 1930 was of a positivist persuasion”.15
Charles-Olivier Carbonell argues, along the same lines, that historical posi-
tivism is “a doctrine without practitioners”. “In fact”, he says, “at that time
[the end of the 19th century] there was no positivist school or tendency
among French historians, and indeed there never has been”.16 Nothing
could be truer. No French historian of the second half of the 19th century
would have called himself a positivist. We may take this already as a serious
indicator of the term’s ambiguity. In reality, the notion of historical positiv-
ism was born much later. It appeared for the first time in the 1940s, at the
hands of historians eager to distance themselves from their predecessors. At
that time, the notion of historical positivism had a pejorative connotation.
Charles Seignobos, an eminent academician, was the target of fierce attacks:
“He sings the praises of histoire-tableau [potted history]—which is histoire-
manuel [text-book history]”, complains Lucien Febvre;17 he has “a rather
simplistic image” of the way we learn, adds Henri-Irénée Marrou.18
Obviously, historical positivism cannot be reduced to a single propo-
nent’s name, however prestigious that name may be. Historical positivism
embraces a wide range of perspectives: the label can be applied as readily
to Fustel de Coulanges as it can to Paul Lacombe, to Camille Jullian or to
Ferdinand Lot, distant forebears of the Annales School—a strange paradox
that merely underlines the anachronistic nature of the expression “historical
positivism”.
How are we then to understand this concept? It would be too easy to say
that Auguste Comte was the instigator of historical positivism. Historians
such as Fustel de Coulanges or Charles Seignobos shared none of the main
ideas of the father of positivism. Indeed, they never considered themselves
positivists, and they studiously avoided the word itself. In fact, 19th-century
historians were generally hostile to the works of Comte and his disciples.
Carbonell’s insistence that “there was no positivist school or movement
among French historians of the 19th century” is, to a large extent, true. On
the other hand, it could almost be said that in history there are as many
positivisms as there are positivists. Faced with such a cluttered landscape,
should we simply abandon the term “positivist history”? Historians have
thought so for some time now. In their work on the “history schools”, Guy
Bourdé and Hervé Martin make no mention of positivist history. More cau-
tiously, they speak of a “method-based school” [école méthodique]. But this
new epithet does not resolve the problem. In fact, the expression “methodi-
cal school” seems even further from the mark because it implies, in a sense,
that historians of that time were using a common method. This is obviously
not the case. Bourdé and Martin themselves admit this: “The program of L.
Bourdeau stands in contrast to the joint approach of G. Monod, E. Lavisse,
Ch.-V. Langlois, Ch. Seignobos and their friends”.19 And what can we say
about the gulf that separates Paul Lacombe or Henri Berr from Charles
Seignobos or Ernest Lavisse?20 The least we can add is that it is surprising
6 Introduction
to find such divergences within what is supposed to be a school. How can
we speak of a school when there is no consensus among its presumed mem-
bers, when we can identify neither a leader nor any particular founder?
The term “scientific history” [histoire-science], which Paul Lacombe was
already using at the end of the 19th century, seems a safer bet. It certainly
has broader scope, but it also has the merit of bringing together under one
label the various tendencies that we find within a succession of writers bent
on constructing a scientific history. In fact, scientific history as it appeared
at the time was not an academic program but a common inclination among
thinkers who were otherwise working independently.
The turn of the century saw the overthrow of what had been considered
certainties. Morality had to be recast, and the relationship between man and
society re-examined according to the criteria of the emerging social sciences.
The pace of time was accelerating, and chaos was taking hold. Both histori-
ans and sociologists dreamed of a society freed from the yoke of the meta-
physicians, one that would give pride of place to scholars and industrialists,
to whom he willingly assigned the task of “completing the Revolution”.21
The new world that was taking shape before their eyes sparked mixed feel-
ings, characterized both by bursts of enthusiasm and by gnawing concerns.
They were not given to wild theorizing: they cast their ideas in context, they
offered answers to the crises that often emerge in the world of science.

Theme and Organization of the Book

These few remarks are intended to pinpoint the intent of this book, in the
course of which we shall address a multitude of writers and of paradigms.
Starting with the definition of scientific history as developed by certain theo-
rists of the late 19th century, moving on through the historical synthesis of
the philosopher Henri Berr to Durkheimian sociology (focusing mainly on
the work of François Simiand), we shall analyze the relationship between
scientific history and sociology from 1880 to 1930, although we will not
adhere rigidly to this time frame. The central focus will be on conflicts
of method, disputes between practitioners of the two disciplines, and the
nature of their arguments and the questions they raise in order finally to see
if there are grounds for opting between these two intellectual communities.
The theme involves three stages. First, we examine the key role that his-
tory played in the development of the social sciences in the mid-19th century
among the pioneers of positivist thought, such as Comte, Cournot, Renan
and Taine.22 We then look at the various ramifications of scientific history
as seen from four perspectives, illustrated by authors as diverse as Fustel
de Coulanges, Louis Bourdeau, Paul Lacombe and Charles Seignobos. The
essential problem and the common concern of these historians and theo-
rists of history is to construct a program that will allow history to become
scientific. But through these perspectives, which contain elements that are
both mutually opposing and mutually complementary, we can make out
 Introduction 7
two diametrically opposed methodological tendencies: one of them sees his-
tory as nothing more than a string of singular events (Seignobos), while for
the other, the march of human history is driven by an implacable necessity
(Fustel de Coulanges, Bourdeau). We shall see how the science of history
swings constantly between these two antithetical perspectives, and we shall
then examine the ambiguities and the hesitations that mark the work of
some authors (Lacombe). The confrontation between these different per-
spectives allows us to identify the chief methodological and theoretical
issues of scientific history and its relationship with the new discipline of
sociology. Many questions will be posed, and they will crop up in various
forms throughout this book. For example: does the history of institutions,
manners and beliefs belong to the field of history or to that of sociology? Is
the history of individual facts a legitimate pursuit from the scientific view-
point? Does scientific history have to embrace both the necessary and the
accidental? Does history have the same explanatory power as sociology?
These questions were still central at the beginning of the 20th century
and they were debated in an intellectual setting that was undergoing radi-
cal change.23 It must be said that the rise of the social sciences did much
to renew and revitalize historical studies. Besides indicating valuable new
methodological and theoretical routes, these new disciplines shed light on
aspects of the past—social, geographic and psychological—that had been
little explored.
With good reason, this book accords a place of honor to Henri Berr. For
more than half a century, he was one of the philosophers who did the most
to extend the field of history to new horizons and to encourage entirely new
areas of study. His work, too little recognized today, is a true plea for open-
ness of mind, and it sparked considerable debate and discussion within the
new coterie of social scientists. Not only did he seek to rally the different
sciences to a historical perspective, he also hoped to unite researchers—
however varied or even divergent their interests—around a discipline that he
called the synthèse historique (historical synthesis). Among other achieve-
ments, he founded two journals for promoting this all-embracing science,
with its nearly unlimited intellectual possibilities: the Revue de synthèse his-
torique in 1900, with an encyclopedic range of interests, and L’Évolution
de l’Humanité in 1919. These often extravagantly ambitious undertakings
reveal the limitations and the weaknesses of factual history or events-based
history [histoire historisante], and they herald the advent of the “new his-
tory”. Thus, in the debates waged by Henri Berr and his collaborators, we
can see the object of history migrate steadily from the singular to the gen-
eral, as events gradually yield the ground to institutions.
Durkheimian sociology was, of course, no stranger to this shift. Through
his many critiques as well as the example set by his own research, Émile
Durkheim and his collaborators helped to ground the science of history
firmly to the search for general and institutional facts. History, for its part,
had been of great assistance to the budding sociologist in preparing his
8 Introduction
program. Very early in his career, he came to regard history as an indis-
pensable “auxiliary science”. For Durkheim, social phenomena could be
explained, not through the assembly of individual facts, but on the basis
of other social facts gleaned from the span of history.24 In effect, by retrac-
ing the stages of history, the sociologist could avoid the perils of subjective
interpretation. This concern with distance across time, as we shall see, was
fully shared by Célestin Bouglé, François Simiand and Maurice Halbwachs.
Of course, scientific theories and methods enunciated more than a cen-
tury ago may seem stale or trite in certain respects. It is important, however,
to appreciate how these theories and these methods were constructed, most
often as a result of debates, experiments and disputes. This leads us on to
the consideration of the origins of an intellectual context involving two fun-
damental disciplines.

Notes
1 Charles-Victor Langlois, Les Études historiques (Paris: Larousse, 1915), p. 10.
2 Jean Ehrard and Guy Palmade, L’Histoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964), p. 50.
3 Pierre Moreau, L’Histoire en France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1935), p. 29.
4 Jacob Burkhardt, Considérations sur l’histoire universelle (Genève: Droz, 1965),
p. 11.
5 Camille Jullian was influenced by Fustel de Coulanges and by the German his-
torian Mommsen. He published what he called the “first scientific” book on la
Gaule (1907–1928) and he was the editor of Fustel de Coulanges’ Histoire des
institutions de l’ancienne France (1890).
6 Camille Jullian, Extraits des historiens français du XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette,
1896), p. XL.
7 Augustin Thierry, “Dix ans d’études historiques”. In Œuvres complètes, 6 (Paris:
Furne, 1846), p. 40.
8 See Charles-Olivier Carbonell, L’Historiographie (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1993), pp. 84–88.
9 See Paule Petitier, Jules Michelet, l’homme histoire (Paris: Grasset, 2006).
10 On the Rankean model, see Georg Iggers, New Directions in European Histori-
ography (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1984), pp. 17–23; Henri
Berr, “Ranke et sa conception de l’histoire”, Revue de synthèse historique (8,
1903), pp. 93–96.
11 Gabriel Monod, “Du progrès des études historiques en France”, Revue histo-
rique (1, 1876), pp. 33–34.
12 Ibid., pp. 26–27.
13 Gaston du Fresne de Beaucourt, “Introduction”, Revue des questions historiques
(1, 1866), p. 9.
14 See Jaume Aurell, La escritura de la memoria (València: Publicacions de la Uni-
versitat de València, 2005), pp. 23–38.
15 Guy Bourdé and Hervé Martin, Les Écoles historiques (Paris: Seuil, 1983),
p. 161.
16 Charles-Olivier Carbonell, Histoire et historiens. Une mutation idéologique
(Toulouse: Institut d’Études politiques de Toulouse, 1976), p. 410.
17 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965), p. 72. The
English historian R. G. Collingwood called this “scissors-and-paste history” (see
The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946).
 Introduction 9
18 Henri-Irenée Marrou, De la connaissance historique (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 73.
19 Guy Bourdé and Hervé Martin, Les Écoles historiques, p. 162.
20 Ernest Lavisse (1842–1922) was a patriotic who considerd history as a scientific
discipline. He wrote Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’à la Révolution
(1901).
21 Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, Du système industriel, 1 (Paris: Charles-Augustin
Renouard, 1821).
22 See Louis Liard, La Science positive et la métaphysique (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1898
(1878)); Émile Boutroux, “Comtisme et positivisme”, Revue bleue (17, 1908),
pp. 161–165; Donald Geoffrey, Charlton, Positivism in France during the Sec-
ond Empire 1852–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).
23 See Robert Bonnaud, Histoire et historiens de 1900 à nos jours (Paris: Kimé,
2001).
24 See Gérard Noiriel, Sur la crise de l’histoire (Paris: Belin, 2005), pp. 92–94.
Part I

The Idea of Scientific History

1 History and the Social Sciences

The enthusiasm for history that emerged at the beginning of the 19th
century had a great influence on the social sciences. Born of the crisis of
Western societies—caught up in what seemed a sudden acceleration of
history—it is natural enough that these sciences should attempt to define
the laws governing human destiny. The social sciences were historical by
necessity: Comte, Cournot, Renan and Taine could not conceive of them
in any other manner. The Revolution of 1789 can be considered to be the
source of their social and political thinking. When romanticism began to
run out of steam around the beginning of the 19th-century mark, the social
sciences attempted to define themselves as true sciences, drawing inspira-
tion in most cases from the model of the physical and biological sciences.
It is often said that the 19th century was the century of history (le siècle de
l’histoire) because of the large number of significant events which unfolded
during its course. But one could also say that the 19th century is just as
much the century of historical method, in the sense that history attempted
to define itself as a science under the influence of a kind of positivism, but a
form of scientific thought was often very far removed from that of Auguste
Comte. This “scientific history” (histoire-science) defined itself at first in
its break with the romanticism in the style of Jules Michelet and then in
opposition to a philosophy of history, which was deemed to be too abstract
and too remote from empirical facts. This new history, which was inspired
by the model of the natural sciences, sought to provide a new interpretation
of the French Revolution. Contrary to the historians of the day, the new
generation of social scientists (or proto-sociologist) refused to see this event
as a fortuitous, completely unforeseen event. Rather, they thought that it
had been in preparation for centuries and that the coming together of all
the necessary preconditions was the clearest illustration of this. Taine, for
example, turned to the Revolution in the aftermath of the defeat of 1870.
Many authors of the second part of the century, who developed each in
their own way what one would later call “historical sociology”, were not,
for all that, positivists.
14 The Idea of Scientific History
Auguste Comte: The Progress of the Human Intelligence
The thinking of Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was a perfect reflection of the
intellectual ferment provoked by the shock of the Revolution. As he him-
self admitted, “without the Revolution there would have been no theory of
progress and no social science”. In the wake of the Revolution, and indeed
throughout the 19th century, there was one question that preoccupied many
thinkers: what are the principles of social order? Comte believed that it was
up to positive philosophy to discern those principles. And he considered that
philosophy would become less and less interested in metaphysical specula-
tion and that it would inevitably attempt to forge ever-closer links with sci-
ence. But, he insisted, before it could be scientific, philosophy would have to
be practical. As the sociologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl points out, Comte’s entire
work was inspired by this social reform movement: “with Comte, the scien-
tific interest, however lively it may be, is subordinate to the social interest”;
in effect, “it asks philosophy to establish the bases of modern society”.1 The
science of society would thereafter have a supremely important function:
it must preside over the reorganization of morals and manners. “I regard
all institutions as pure nonsense, and they will remain so until the spiritual
reorganization of society is complete or at least well under way”.2
The reform of society and the reform of knowledge were supposed to
complement each other. If society was to be reorganized, the same must
hold for science. On this point, Comte proposed a classification of sciences.
His classification is highly selective: it leaves aside all the artistic disciplines
(literature, philology, poetry etc.) as well as all the concrete sciences (geog-
raphy, zoology etc.), and considers only the abstract or theoretical ones, i.e.
those that have as their objective to discover and understand laws. In the
end, Comte recognized only six sciences: mathematics, astronomy, phys-
ics, chemistry, biology and sociology. And he placed these sciences within a
strict historical timeframe.
As his classification of the sciences demonstrates so eloquently, Comte’s
grand plan was to understand the progress of human intelligence. Which
science is best equipped to grasp the main features of that progress? To
begin with, Comte rejects introspective psychology à la Victor Cousin,
which he deems unworthy of a place in his classification—as he saw it,
the individual had no scientific rationale and was merely an abstraction.
Thus, Comte argues that the movement in which humanity is caught up
can be understood only through a collective psychology, which he named
“social physics” or “sociology”. In his view, this justified the creation of a
science of society which, like all the other sciences, would revolve around
two aspects: the static and the dynamic. The static element, which is the
science of order, is supposed to reveal the laws of coexistence, whereas the
dynamic element, which is the science of progress, must examine the laws
of succession. Sociology, according to Comte, becomes a real science only
when it superimposes these two stages of knowledge.
 History and the Social Sciences 15
This fundamental place of history in the work of Auguste Comte is so
well known that we do not need to linger over it here: suffice it to say that
the father of positivism was hostile to the narrative nature of the histo-
riography of his time. “We do not yet have a true history conceived in a
scientific spirit”, he writes in an early essay, “by which I mean a history
that seeks to discover the laws that govern the development of the human
species”.3 In his Cours de philosophie positive, Comte mentions that politi-
cal and military history, so dear to historians of the time, was nothing more
than a display of erudition that was “sterile and misdirected”, one that
tended to distract from the study of social evolution.4 Thus conceived, his-
tory is superficial and not of much use; it is merely “an incoherent compila-
tion of facts”.5 Assembling a multitude of heterogeneous facts runs counter
to any serious scientific approach. Consequently, history is still far from
the ideal stage, which Comte calls the positive stage, but history remains
a fundamental method. The study of individual facts, he notes, helps to
“maintain theological and metaphysical belief in the limitless and creative
power that lawgivers wield over civilization [. . .] This unfortunate effect
results from the fact that, in great events, we see only people and never
the things that drive them so irresistibly”.6 Hence this merciless judgment:
“all the historical works written to date, even the most laudable, had never
been, and by necessity never could be, anything more than annals, i.e. a
description and chronological account of a certain sequence of particular
facts, more or less important and more or less accurate, but always isolated
from each other”.7
In history, of course, not everything is of equal importance: “We must
look to the human past only for social phenomena that have obviously
exerted real influence, at least indirect or remote influence, on the gradual
unfolding of the successive phases that have brought the most advanced
nations to their present state”.8 The law of the three stages [la loi des trois
états], which is considered one of Comte’s most original propositions, estab-
lishes the principle of harmony between the history of thought, the general
history of science and the history of society.
It was in 1822, in what he called his “plan for reorganizing society” (Plan
des travaux pour réorganiser la société), that Comte set forth for first time,
in an embryonic way, his famous law of the three stages of human devel-
opment: the ideological and military stage, the metaphysical and legalistic
stage and the positive and industrial stage. In the Cours de philosophie posi-
tive, he argues that the phases of social development depend more on the
types of knowledge inherent to them: the theological stage corresponds to
an archaic social structure, the metaphysical stage to a feudal social struc-
ture and the positive stage to an industrial social structure. In the end, there
is only one dynamic law, and it governs all sociology and all human knowl-
edge: “Do we not, each of us, in looking back on our own lives, remember
that we were successively a theologian in our childhood, a metaphysician
in our youth, and a physicist in adulthood?”9 In his Système de philosophie
16 The Idea of Scientific History
positive, published at the end of his life, he devoted a volume to history. This
volume is called Philosophy of history.10
From his first to his last works, Auguste Comte never changed his mind
about history and the role that discipline plays in his system of thought.
According to him, positivism “explains the mental evolution of Humanity,
lays down the true method by which our abstract conceptions could be
classified; thus reconciling the conditions of order and movement, hitherto
to more or less variance. Its historical clearness and its philosophical force
strength each other, for one cannot understand the connection of our con-
ceptions except by studying the succession of the phases through which they
pass. And on the other hand, but the existence of such a connection, it
would be impossible to explain the historical phases”.11
But Comte, as we could see, is opposed to history as an encyclopedic
knowledge. For him, as his famous law of three stages reminds us, history is
nothing else than a psychology of humanity.

Antoine Augustin Cournot: Between

Chance and Necessity
Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801–1877) was a mathematician, economist
and philosopher. He became familiar early with many authors from various
disciplines, including Leibniz, Laplace, Darwin and Poisson, and was a keen
follower of both natural sciences and emerging social sciences (especially
political economy). His devotion to epistemology, as we will see, makes the
core of his writings.
The vision of history that dominated Antoine Augustin Cournot’s think-
ing was the product of a culture shaped by mathematics and by philosophy.
He did not, however, espouse a mechanical application of the mathematical
model to the social sciences. He knew too well that social phenomena are
specific in their nature, in that they are the result of strategic intentions and
behavior. From this perspective, psychology, which he regarded as an unsci-
entific discipline, seemed to him of little use. He preferred to fall back on
philosophy and on history. Yet these disciplines, taken in isolation, seemed
to him incomplete. He set out therefore to tie philosophical speculation and
historical narration together with close links of reciprocity. “If we are to
have a philosophy of history, we must first know history, just as, if we are to
have a philosophical anatomy, we must first have mastered descriptive anat-
omy. The condition is obvious in both cases; and moreover, when it comes
to history in particular, it is clear that we cannot recount it without placing
events in order, one behind the other, as they occurred in time. Whereas if
we are to appreciate the subordination of the great features of history and of
the secondary features or accidents of detail, we must at the same time look
at the sequence of events that have come in succession over the centuries,
in a procedure that is quite the reverse of that used in narrative history”.12
This approach reflects not only a research strategy, but also a lively interest
 History and the Social Sciences 17
in observing empirical facts, something we hardly find with Auguste Comte.
In this way, Cournot is able to discern laws of history that are not linear
but are, to the contrary, marked by discontinuities of all kinds. The idea of
the “reason of things” is an especially clear illustration of this. It holds that
everything has a cause. Like Leibniz, Cournot seeks to extract an order, a
generality, from irregular and accidental phenomena.13 He tries, he says, to
discern the “general aspect” (allure générale). The goal of the philosophy
of history, or what Cournot calls “historical etiology”,14 is then to establish
an order, a hierarchy among the facts in order to determine, not a singular
cause, but the many causes that contribute to a phenomenon or a trend.
Cournot possessed an encyclopedic knowledge that allowed him to read
history in this way. In his writings, he restores dignity and importance to
the aspect of chance: it becomes “a true fact in itself”,15 perfectly objec-
tive, which cannot be reduced to some subjective finality. Thus, “the word
‘chance’ is not unrelated to external reality; it expresses an idea that has its
manifestation in observable phenomena, and an effectiveness that we can
see in the governance of the world; [it is] an idea based on reason, even
for intelligences that are far superior to human intelligence and that could
peer into a multitude of causes of which we are unaware”.16 Chance, in
fact, is nothing more than the conjunction of causes that are themselves
independent.17
But the general orientation of mankind, marked first and foremost by the
progress of reason and technology, suggests that chance is bound to recede.
Three great phases—prehistoric, historic and post-historic—testify to this
inevitable retreat. There is in this orientation a kind of fatality, a pessimism
that Cournot cannot always conceal.
The prehistoric phase relates to an obscure moment in social and intel-
lectual development where individual forces are virtually anonymous and
of no great impact. There we find no great men, no geniuses, no great
inventors. The main characteristic of prehistoric or archaic societies is their
homogeneity. Their way of life is instinctive, spontaneous. At this stage,
instinct dominates reason. The prehistoric phase, to borrow the language of
biological science, is a vitalist phase.
The historic phase, which according to Cournot coincides roughly with
the advent of writing, begins only when social life reaches a fair degree of
sophistication. It is at this moment that a continuous transformation occurs,
a progress that is characterized by the preponderance of reason over instinct
and by the occurrence of fortuitous events. In fact, the historic phase, the
intermediary point in social evolution, can be characterized essentially as
the “theater of great personages”.18
But as the number of great individuals gradually declines, as events
become rarer and even predictable, when chance, in short, has significantly
receded, societies will enter the post-historic phase. Mankind of the future,
then, will have to be industrious, there will be no geniuses, and discoveries
will be doomed to disappear in anonymity. Moreover, Cournot maintains,
18 The Idea of Scientific History
without much enthusiasm, peoples are destined to become more like each
other, to intermingle, and ultimately to blend into a “general civilization”.19
This reading of history sparked much comment at the beginning of the
20th century. Some sought in it lessons for the future, and it was often
reduced, in cursory judgments, to the realm of prophecy. Yet this, it seems,
betrays an important misunderstanding. Antoine Augustin Cournot was not
necessarily trying to predict. He subscribed above all to a scientific realism
that prevented him from decreeing an eventual end to history. He merely
tried to determine what was likely to happen if certain conditions were
fulfilled.
At this point, history resembles a game of chess where every move, even
one that appears least significant, is part of a broader strategy.20 Action can
now be seen as dependent on the rationality of the players.21 Military his-
tory, which has often attracted the attention of historians, is a fine example.
Cournot explains military history as a combination of strategies confronting
and clashing with each other. To highlight the main moments of a battle and
to record the outcome of a chess game are in fact analogous operations: in
both cases, we are establishing linkages between each move, between each
event, in order to show the relative influence each exerts on subsequent
events.
But it is only to rational actions, strictly speaking, and not to agents, that
the stuff of history can be reduced. It is true, as Cournot recognized himself,
that subjective action is shaped by its setting but not completely determined
by it. Interaction does not occur necessarily between two or more individu-
als, but between the individual and the social milieu.
In seeking to articulate relationships of reciprocity between the necessary
and the fortuitous, Cournot, who said he was opposed to “systems men”,22
succeeded in mobilizing the attention of two intellectual communities, the
sociologists and the historians. The sociologists Gabriel Tarde and Célestin
Bouglé claimed explicitly to be his heirs.23 As to Henri Berr, he was quite
ready to call Cournot “the precursor of synthesis”, for “he could see that
chance and order, accident and reason are constantly doing battle in the
unfolding of history”.24 This assertion, coming from a philosopher who was
always seeking to forge alliances between the historical discipline and the
emerging social sciences, seems quite natural. But it is perhaps more surpris-
ing to read, from the pen of Lucien Febvre, a great admirer of Michelet,
the following remark: “Cournot, this philosopher-mathematician, this great
theoretician of chance, this investigator of probabilities [. . .]—how much
we historians have to gain from reading him!”25 The work of Cournot thus
became a beacon for those hoping to open a dialogue between history and
sociology.
But Cournot rejects Comte’s law of the three stages. On this basis, he
defines the role of philosophy. “Whether there are or are not laws, it is
enough that these facts are sometimes subordinate and sometimes indepen-
dent of each other, in order that a critical philosophy should set for itself
 History and the Social Sciences 19
the task of determining independence or subordination whether necessary
and proper”.26 Philosophy, as we could see, bridges gap between necessity
and chance. Cournot will, then, have a huge influence on Lacombe, Berr
and Bouglé.

Ernest Renan: In Praise of Science

In the same vein as Auguste Comte’s work, that of Ernest Renan (1823–
1892) bears the imprint of the French Revolution. With Renan, the abrupt
acceleration of history that flowed from that event gave rise to many con-
cerns and uncertainties but also to great hopes. The central theme of his
work is found in his book on the future of science, L’Avenir de la science,
which was written in his youth, in 1848, but published in 1890, and one
that Charles Péguy quite rightly hailed as “a testament to life”.27
In the aftermath of the Revolution, the value of religion was called into
question by the intelligentsia, and its influence declined not only because
people no longer believed it had a monopoly over moral values, but also
because some thought it no longer capable of explaining human destiny
in a satisfactory way.28 The void left by religion encouraged the emergence
of a plethora of philosophical systems in a sequence extending throughout
the first half of the 19th century. The young Renan was among those who
had lost faith.29 He gave himself a new mission: to free the spirit from the
“grave danger” of Catholicism, which “has disastrous effects on develop-
ment of the brain”.30 Henceforth, he would believe only in science, which
he deemed a virtue. If people no longer believed in religious values, then it
was essential, as Renan saw it, that they should at least have a concept of
the world, for “to live without a system for understanding things is not to
live a human life”.31 Science thus becomes, for Renan, “a way of disobeying
God”32—and this, of course, explains why “Christianity has not been very
favorable to the development of positive science”.33
But Ernest Renan thought that science had not only an extraordinary
intellectual power; he considered, like Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, it
the principal force for organizing the moral order. Science would therefore
have to replace religion, even if it differed fundamentally in its principles:
“it does not come from on high”, it “emerges from the depths of our con-
sciousness”. Like religion, however, it is a sacred thing, and its function is
analogous: to resolve “the human enigma”, “to tell man definitively the
meaning of things” and, finally, to serve man as a symbol.34 “It is then
no exaggeration”, writes Renan, “to say that science contains within it the
future of humanity, that it alone can reveal to man his destiny and teach him
how to achieve his purpose”.35
It was the upheavals sparked by the Revolution that gave birth to ratio-
nal thought: that event marks “the advent of thinking in human governance.
It is the time when the child, brought to this point by spontaneous instincts,
caprice and the will of others, becomes a person who is free, moral and
20 The Idea of Scientific History
responsible for his acts”. In fact, for Ernest Renan, all the time that elapsed
before 1789 was “the irrational period of human existence (. . .) The true
history of France begins in ’89; everything that went before was a gradual
preparation for ‘89 and is of no interest beyond that”.36 The year 1789,
then, was much more than a political revolution that led to the overthrow
of the monarchy. It was also more than a democratic revolution that gave
power to the people: it was, above all, a revolution of thinking. Previously,
there were institutions, beliefs and dogmas, and no one ever questioned
their origins and their profound meanings: “the world was a grand machine
organized so long ago and with so little thought that people believed God
himself had put it together”.37
Ernest Renan’s system, like that of Comte, sets out to enlighten man-
kind as to the progress of human intelligence. However, Renan brings into
play some sciences that Comte had dismissed as unimportant. Philology is
a prime example. Renan gives it an essentially heuristic function. Philology,
he writes, “has no purpose in itself: it has its value as a necessary condition
of the history of the human mind and the study of the past”.38 It is, in fact,
“the exact science of the phenomena of the mind. It is to the social sciences
what physics and chemistry are to the philosophical science of matter”.39
Philology provides access to the facts: what remains is to interpret them
and to theorize about them. It is here that psychology intervenes. In Renan’s
mind, psychology has a very broad meaning; it is defined as the science of the
genesis of a “being”, individual and collective, “creating itself and arriving
by varying degrees at full possession of itself”. Once again, Renan refuses to
present himself as an evolutionist in Auguste Comte’s meaning of that term.
The evolution of mankind, he insists, did not necessarily pass through suc-
cessive historical phases of development: “if there is one idea that I see as
outmoded, it is that nations succeed one another, passing through the same
phases to perish in their turn, then to live again under other names, with
the same dream beginning over and over again. What a nightmare human-
ity would then be! How absurd revolutions would seem! How pallid and
meaningless life would be!”40
Yet, from the methodological viewpoint, Renan, like Auguste Comte,
tends to consider the individual as a pure abstraction. Behind any success-
ful individual, he insists, there is “the crowd”—the masses—and although
its role is often obscured, it is no less important: “The crowd lends him the
raw material; the man of genius gives it expression, shapes it and brings it
to life; then the crowd, which feels but cannot speak, sees itself reflected and
rejoices aloud”. All power of creation emanates from the collectivity: “it is
the masses that create; for the masses possess the moral instincts of human
nature, eminently and a thousand times more spontaneously”.41 This asser-
tion, which dates from the middle of the 19th century, presages some core
ideas of Émile Durkheim’s sociology. And, following the route of 1870,
when Paris fell to the Prussian army and the Second Empire of Napoleon III
collapsed, Renan refers to the idea of “collective conscience”: “A country
 History and the Social Sciences 21
is not the simple sum of the individuals who comprise it; it is a soul, a con-
science, a person, a living being”.42
Who were the guilty parties in this denial of the collective role? Ernest
Renan identifies them clearly: they are, on one hand, the historians, whose
sole interest is in presenting events and singular occurrences and, on
the other hand, the philosophers who, ignoring empirical facts, take refuge
in vast, abstract systems. How can these two paradoxical approaches be
reconciled?
Renan envisages an in-depth reform of intellectual scholarship. “The
human goal is not happiness”, he insists: “it is intellectual and moral per-
fection”.43 And the route to this perfection is through knowledge. Thus, a
primary and extremely urgent task of all the sciences is to fight against the
mindset of specialization, against “sectarian and confined studies”. The best
way to avoid the pitfall of specialization, as Renan sees it, is to proceed in
three successive steps, inspired by Hegelian philosophy, involving “first, a
general and confused view; second, a distinct and analytic view of the parts;
third, a synthetic reconstruction of all, with understanding of the parts; the
human mind, similarly, passes through three stages that we may call in turn
syncretic, analytic and synthetic, and that correspond to these three phases
of knowledge”.44 “Perfect science is possible only if it is based on an analysis
and a distinct view of its parts [. . .] Mankind will be knowledgeable only
when science has dissected the human being, explored it to the last detail,
and reconstructed it”.45 Analysis and synthesis, then, become the two fun-
damental stages of the scientific approach: “The heroes of science are those
who are capable of the loftiest visions and yet have forbidden themselves
any precipitous generalization, and have resigned themselves, through scien-
tific virtue, to the status of humble workers”.46 The approach proposed by
Renan, then, is a compromise between the strict empiricism of the historian
and the hyper-theorization of the philosophers.
This fusion of analysis and synthesis is, in Renan’s eyes, the only way to
restore unity to thought and knowledge. It is also the essential condition for
preparing a new moral order.

Hippolyte Taine: Applying the Scientific Model

of Natural Sciences to History
Historian, philosopher and sociologist, born at Vouziers in 1828, Hippolyte
Taine excelled in his studies at the Lycée Condorcet and entered the École
Normale Supérieure in 1848. Although his first works dealt with literary
criticism, he was also attracted to psychology (individual and group), as
exemplified in his Essai sur Tite-Live (1856) and his Histoire de la littérature
anglaise (four vols, 1864) works in which he developed what he claimed to
be a scientific method. No doubt influenced by the events of 1870, Taine
turned to political questions in his Origines de la France contemporaine
(four vols, 1875–1893). Despite some objections as to his attention to
22 The Idea of Scientific History
historical detail, the fact remains that Taine, whose name is above all associ-
ated with conservatism, offered a critique of Jacobinism and the Commune
of Paris. He was distrustful of democracy and in favour of a minimalist state
dominated by elites.
Like Renan, Taine belongs to the positivist school, in its broad concep-
tion. Convinced of the benefits of science, he was sure that the development
of positivism was the outstanding achievement of the intellectual history of
the past three centuries. He demanded a great deal from science: it was to
be his guide and his faith. The natural sciences, including physiology, would
serve as his model for constructing the laws of human history.47
Very early on, Taine, who called himself an “anatomical historian”,48
was seized by concern to elevate history to the status of a science. At the
École Normale, he had already laid the basis of his own philosophical sys-
tem “in contradiction to the instruction he was receiving”.49 At that time,
and throughout the early part of his intellectual career, Taine was strongly
attracted by history, but as applied to literature.50 He read Lafontaine and
Racine keenly and applied to them his theory of the “milieu”, which was
then in gestation. But his concept of this literary history was a scientific
one. In 1852, when he was only 25, he wrote to his friend Lucien-Anatole
Prévost-Paradol: “I ponder increasingly over this grand philosophical conun-
drum (pâtée philosophique) [. . .] of making history a science and giving it
an anatomy and physiology as we do the organic world”.51 Mere youthful
bravado? Not at all. This conception of history would remain ingrained and
virtually unchanged in Taine’s mind. In his Essais de critique et d’histoire, he
insisted that “there is an anatomy in human history as in natural history”,52
for if “we deconstruct a personage, a literature, a century, a civilization, in
short any natural group of human events, we will find that all its parts are
mutually dependent as are the organs of a plant or an animal”.53 In Taine’s
eyes, however, history is still an art, and its primary function is to take
account of emotions, for “men have never done great things without emo-
tions”.54 Events and individuals are also among the concerns of scientific
history. “The human life that the historian imitates is not a formula but a
drama, and the laws act upon it only through events”.55 The lives of great
men, too, are intimately bound up with the human drama: “as the heroic
sentiment is the cause of everything else, it is on that sentiment that the
historian must focus. As it is the source of civilization, the engine of revolu-
tions, the master and the re-creator of human life, it is to that sentiment that
we must look to find civilization, revolutions and human life”.56
Like Renan, Hippolyte Taine believed that the science of history must
expose the principles governing the mental evolution of peoples.57 In this
regard, he sought to unify psychology and history, sciences which, he main-
tained, had the same focus of interest—the genesis of man—although they
approached it in different ways. In De l’Intelligence, which Paul Lacombe
rightly called a “document of national psychology”,58 Taine writes: “the stu-
dent of man and of mankind, the psychologist and the historian, although
 History and the Social Sciences 23
they have separate viewpoints, have nevertheless the same objective; that
is why each new insight achieved by one must be taken into account by
the other. This is clear today, especially in history. We see that in order to
understand the transformation that any human molecule or any group of
human molecules goes through we must turn to psychology”.59 In this way,
he establishes a division of labor between the historian and the psychologist:
the former must compile the facts, and the latter must construct theoretical
principles from them.
To the end of his life, Taine remained absolutely steadfast in his concep-
tion of history, changing not even the slightest detail. As history and the
natural sciences were sibling disciplines, he believed that they must adopt
common methodological principles. In his last body of work, the Origines
de la France contemporaine, he presents his beloved country as if it were
a living being. He analyzes it in all its complexity, not with the cold logic
of the scientist, but with the passion of an artist. He sets out to retrace its
development.60 The first volume on the Ancien régime begins with this
query: “What is contemporary France? To answer that question requires a
knowledge of how France was formed, or, what is much better, being pres-
ent at her formation, as if a spectator. At the close of the last century she
undergoes a transformation, like that of an insect shedding its coat. Her
ancient organization breaks up; she herself rends the most precious tissues
and falls into convulsions which seem moral. And then, there is recovery,
after multiplied throes and a painful lethargy. But her organization is no
longer what it was; a new being, after her organization is no longer what
it was; a new being, after terrible internal travail, is substituted for the
old one”.61
This is not the language of a historian, who would surely never use such
metaphors. Taine’s work is more that of a philosopher pondering history
than that of a historian looking back philosophically at the past. Prior to the
Origines de la France contemporaine, Taine had written nothing on social
history; he had confined himself to the theory of history, to the history of art
and to literary history. The Origines represent a turning point in his work.
The debacle of 1870 certainly played a role in this break—thanks to Claude
Digeon’s work,62 we can appreciate the full impact that this drama had on
the generations of French intellectuals who experienced it. Taine’s biogra-
pher, Victor Giraud, wrote at the beginning of the 20th century that “this
was a sad awakening. For Taine, as for Renan and still others, Germany
had been his intellectual inspiration. For him, perhaps more than for anyone
else, it had been like a second homeland”.63 Taine wrote history, but he was
also played an active role on the stage of history, and he reveled in it. The
upheavals of 1870 opened the way for him to pursue new intellectual preoc-
cupations. As of that moment, he put philosophical speculation behind him
and devoted himself entirely to reconstructing the French heritage, with a
haste dictated by his patriotism. As Gabriel Monod put it, Taine “would
be a physician looking for symptoms of the malady, eager to diagnose its
24 The Idea of Scientific History
nature and hoping to cure it”.64 This concern for social reform is one of the
essential elements of positivist doctrine.
Jean-Paul Cointet has shown recently that Taine was, with his Origines
de la France contemporaine, one of the ancestors of a “new history” (une
nouvelle histoire). Taine, as he explained himself, was opposed to both
traditional historiography focusing on events, battles and great men, and
philosophy or religious interpretations. On this basis, he described his
approach: “They exist for the birth, maintenance, and development of
human societies, for the formation, conflict, and direction of ideas, passions
and determinations of human individuals. In all this, Man is bound up with
nature; hence, if we would comprehend him, we must observe him in her,
after her, and like her, with the same independence, the same precautions,
and in the same spirit. Through this remark alone the method of the moral
sciences is fixed. In history, in psychology, in morals, in politics, the thinkers
of the preceding century, Pascal, Bossuet, Descartes, Fénelon, Malebranche,
and La Bruyère, all based their thoughts on dogma. It is plain to every one
qualified to read them that their base is predetermined. Religion provided
them with a complete theory of the moral order of things; according to
this theory, latent or exposed, they described Man and accommodated their
observations to the preconceived model. The writers of the eighteenth cen-
tury rejected this method: they dwell on Man, on the observable Man, and
on his surroundings; in their eyes, conclusions about the soul, its origin, and
its destiny, must come afterwards and depend wholly, not on that which the
Revelation provided, but on that which observation does and will provide.
The moral sciences are now divorced from theology and attach themselves,
as if a prolongation of them, to the physical sciences”.65
He is mainly interested by the everyday life of the French people. What
do they do? What do they eat? What do they produce? How do they live?
How do they think? How do they see the new social hierarchy? We can see
here the influence of Taine on the Annales School. Jean-Paul Cointet is right
when he claimed that Taine wrote a “social monograph” [une monographie
sociale].66

The Ramifications of Positivism

Cournot and Comte diverged in their thinking on many points, and indeed,
there is abundant literature to illustrate those differences. Far from giving
himself over to any form of determinism, Cournot saw chance as an essen-
tial element in the evolution of human societies. From this standpoint, then,
he could only be in disagreement with the determinism that he detected in
Comte’s law of the three stages. Cournot rejected the idea that the sciences
are inevitably destined, in their logical unfolding, to arrive at the final stage,
the positive stage.67
The fact that Renan and Taine can be considered positivists by some
historians of social sciences does not mean that they were disciples of
 History and the Social Sciences 25
Comte: on the contrary, they were hostile to his works and those of his fol-
lowers. Each in his own way was opposed to Auguste Comte’s system of
thought. Renan writes: “M. Comte adopts an a priori method with regard
to the social sciences. Instead of following the infinite twists and turns of
human societies [. . .] he aspires from the outset to a simplicity which the laws
of humanity afford to a much lesser degree even than do the laws of the
physical world [. . .] The task of tracing mankind’s history is over once he
has tried to prove that the human intellect proceeds from theology through
metaphysics to positive science. Morality, poetry, religion, mythology, all
are pure fantasy of no value [. . .] M. Comte’s misfortune is that he has a
system and that he does not venture far enough into the innermost reaches
of the human mind, which is open to currents from every direction”.68
Taine strikes a very similar note: “What we know about M. Comte is
unlikely to attract many readers to his works. Among bad writers he is
probably one of the worst; if the first volumes of his Cours are tolerable, the
latter ones and, in general, the works where he deals with politics, religion
and history are, in their barbarity, the equal of the most tiresome writings
of German philosophy or scholastic philosophy. I find it hard to read more
than 50 pages at a sitting—and if I am to remember any specific ideas, I still
have to take up a pen and translate them”.69
The harshness of these attacks leaves little doubt as to how Renan and
Taine felt about the works of Auguste Comte. And yet, they are still often
presented as disciples of Comte. Curiously enough, it has been argued that
Renan and Taine were “the direct heirs of Comte’s positivism”.70 This asser-
tion is highly contestable, and it would seem more accurate to admit, as one
author puts it, that “Renan is at pains to discard the positive philosophy of
Comte”.71 The philosopher Henri Bergson goes still further: “Renan had no
intellectual kinship with Comte”.72 The same can be said for the thinking
of Taine,73 which is more reminiscent of Hegel than of the father of French
positivism:74 what could be further from Comtism then his psychology of
sensations or his history of art?75
Nor does either Renan or Taine show much sign of humility before
the object of their observation. They both maintain the essential traits of
romanticism. The philosopher Émile Bréhier put it well: “We see in Renan
a conflict between an intellectual awareness that submits to the methods of
positive science and his romantic aspirations”. And with respect to Taine,
“in meditating upon the works of Spinoza, Condillac and Hegel, he arrived
at a notion of intelligibility that seems at first glance quite foreign to the
positivist preoccupations that held sway around 1850”.76 It is also true that,
in contrast to Comte, Taine and Renan conducted empirical research on
numerous fronts: as examples, we have Renan’s work on the history of reli-
gion and Taine’s writings on contemporary France.
Yet Comte, Cournot, Renan and Taine still have some traits in common:
from their individual perspectives, they proposed a philosophical system
in which history occupied a central position. More generally, their basic
26 The Idea of Scientific History
concern was to understand and analyze the progress of the human intel-
ligence. What is more, they all arrived at the irrefutable conclusion that
science must be the principal instrument of that progress. And they were
certain that all the ills of modern societies could be cured through science—
they entertained the dream that science could reestablish moral order. It is
no surprise, then, that in their research, these authors gave pride of place to
the temporal dimension: they were tormented witnesses to the great upheav-
als and to the sudden acceleration of history. The French Revolution, as
we have seen, was the core inspiration of the entire positive philosophy of
Auguste Comte. And it was the events of 1848 that thrust Renan into the
midst of the revolutionary yearnings of 1789. In his varied writings, the
echoes of the Revolution resonate loud and clear. Finally, in the wake of
the humiliation of 1870, Taine put his scientific culture at the service of his
country.
All of this leads us to pose a question about the works of these forerun-
ners of French positivism, a question that evokes the ambiguity and the
exceedingly broad scope of the notion of positivism: what influence did they
have on the “positivist” French historiography of the late 19th century?
At first glance, that influence is difficult to measure. More precisely, it
makes itself felt rather indirectly. As we know, Comte was reviled by the
historians, and Renan, Taine and Cournot fared little better in the support
they garnered from that quarter. They have often been regarded not as sci-
entists but as metaphysicians or, at best, as philosophers of history. At the
crossroads of romanticism and positivism, the influence of Renan and Taine
was largely confined to the realm of literary criticism.
In all their voluminous and diversified works, Comte, Cournot, Renan
and Taine in fact did no more than sketch out the bases of a scientific
approach to history. They did not endow it with either a program or a
method. Their approach remained above all philosophical, and in the case
of Renan and Taine, it was bound up in literary and poetic trappings more
reminiscent of the Romantic era. For scientific history, this provides all the
grounds needed for an unequivocal condemnation.

Notes
1 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, La Philosophie d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Alcan, 1913),
pp. 3–4.
2 Auguste Comte quoted in Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, La Philosophie d’Auguste Comte,
p. 5.
3 Auguste Comte, Plan des travaux scientifiques pour réorganiser la société (Paris:
Aubier-Montaigne, 1970), p. 168.
4 Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 5 (Paris: Baillière, 1869), pp. 4–5.
5 Ibid., p. 10.
6 Auguste Comte, Plan des travaux scientifiques pour réorganiser la société,
p. 115.
7 Ibid., p. 168.
8 Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 5, p. 3.
 History and the Social Sciences 27
9 Ibid., 1, p. 11.
10 Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, 3 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 262.
11 Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity, 1 (London: Longmans, Green and co.,
1875), p. 35.
12 Antoine Augustin Cournot, “Traité de l’enchaînement des idées fondamentales
dans les sciences et dans l’histoire”. In Œuvres complètes, 3 (Paris: Vrin, 1982),
pp. 489–490.
13 “Just as everything must have its reason, so everything that we call an event
must have a cause. Often the cause of an event escapes us or we take something
to be its cause which is not. But neither our inability to supply the principle of
causation, nor the mistakes into which we fall when we apply it carelessly, have
shaken our adherence to this principle as an absolute and necessary law. We
always trace an effect back to its immediate cause; in turn, this cause is con-
ceived nor can observation attain any limit to this progressive series. Turning in
the other direction, a present effect becomes, or at least may become, the cause
of a subsequent event, and so on to infinity” (Antoine Augustin Cournot, An
Essay on the Foundations of Our Knowledge (New York: The Liberal Arts Press,
1956), p. 39.
14 Antoine Augustin Cournot, “Considérations sur la marche des idées et des évé-
nements dans les temps modernes”. In Œuvres complètes, 4 (Paris: Vrin, 1973).
15 Ibid., p. 9.
16 Antoine Augustin Cournot, “Matérialisme, vitalisme, rationalisme”. In Œuvres
complètes, 5 (Paris: Vrin, 1979), p. 175.
17 See Thierry Martin, Probabilités et critique selon Cournot (Paris: Vrin, 1997).
18 Antoine Augustin Cournot, “Matérialisme, vitalisme, rationalisme”, p. 134.
19 Raymond Ruyer, L’Humanité de l’avenir d’après Cournot (Paris: Félix Alcan,
1930); Louis Arnélia, “La fin de l’histoire: le point de vue de Cournot”, Diogène
(79, 1972), pp. 27–59.
20 In his Essay, Cournot writes: “The conditions of a historical connection begin to
come out in a game such as backgammon. Here each throw of the dice, although
brought about by fortuitous circumstances, nevertheless has an influence on the
results of the subsequent throws. The requirement of historical connection show
themselves still more in the game of chess, in which the reflective determination
of the player is substituted for the chance of the dice, yet in such a way that the
ideas of the player give rise to a multitude of accidental encounters when cross-
ing those of his opponent. The account of a game of backgammon or of chess, if
we should decide to pass the record of it along to posterity, would be a history
just like any other, having its crisis and its denouements. This is so because the
moves not only follow one another, but they are also linked together in the sense
that each moves has more or less influence on the series of subsequent moves and
its influenced by the preceding moves. Should the game become still more com-
plicated, the history of a part of it would become philosophically comparable to
that of a battle or campaign, except for the importance of the results. It might
even be possible to say without whimsy that there have been many battles and
many campaigns whose history no more deserves to be remembered today that
does that of a game of chess” (1956), p. 452.
21 Bertrand Saint-Sernin, Cournot, le réalisme (Paris: Vrin, 1998), p. 168.
22 Antoine Augustin Cournot, “Considérations sur la marche des idées et des évé-
nements dans les temps modernes” In Œuvres complètes, 4 (Paris: Vrin, 1973)
p. 500.
23 On Cournot’s sociology, see Jean Paumen, “Les Deux sociologies de Cournot”,
Revue de l’Institut de sociologie (2–3, 1950), pp. 5–43; Robert Leroux, Cournot
sociologue (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2004), pp. 169–180. On the
28 The Idea of Scientific History
links between Cournot and Tarde see Thierry Martin, “From Philosophy of His-
tory to Social Science: Gabriel Tarde reader of Cournot”. In Robert Leroux (ed.),
The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde (London: Anthem Press, 2017).
24 Henri Berr, La Synthèse en histoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1953), pp. 205–206.
25 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965), p. 294.
26 See Augustin Cournot, “Considérations sur la marche des idées et des événe-
ments dans les temps modernes”.
27 Charles Péguy, “De la situation faite à l’histoire et à la sociologie dans le monde
moderne” (1906). In Œuvres en prose, 3 (Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue,
1927), p. 69.
28 See Jean-Pierre van Deth, Ernest Renan. Simple chercheur de vérité (Paris:
Fayard, 2012), pp. 213–228.
29 Ibid., pp. 103–131.
30 Ernest Renan, La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (Paris: Michel Lévy,
1871/1972), p. 97.In Œuvres complètes, 1 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy), p. 392.
31 Ernest Renan, “L’Avenir de la science” (1890). In Œuvres complètes, 3 (Paris:
Calmann-Lévy), pp. 746.
32 Ibid., p. 742.
33 Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’averroïsme (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1866), p. 111.
34 Ernest Renan, “L’Avenir de la science” (1848), 3, p. 744.
35 Ibid., pp. 756–757.
36 Ibid., p. 747.
37 Ibid., p. 750.
38 Ibid., p. 832.
39 Ibid., p. 847.
40 Ibid., p. 866.
41 Ibid., pp. 885–886.
42 Ernest Renan, La Réforme morale et intellectuelle en France (Paris: Michel Lévy,
1871/1972), p. 47.
43 Ernest Renan, “Réflexions sur l’état des esprits” (1849). In Œuvres complètes, 1
(Paris: Calmann-Lévy), p. 214.
44 Ernest Renan, “L’Avenir de la science” (1890), In Œuvres complètes, 3 (Paris:
Calmann-Lévy), p. 968.
45 Ibid., p. 974.
46 Ernest Renan, “La Métaphysique et son avenir” (1860). In Œuvres complètes, 1
(Paris-Calmann-Lévy), pp. 701–702.
47 See Pascale Seys, Hippolyte Taine et l’avènement du naturalisme. Un intellectuel
sous le Second Empire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999).
48 Wolf Lepenies, Between Litterature and Science: The Rise of Sociology (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 60.
49 Henri Sée, Science et philosophie de l’histoire (Paris: Alcan, 1933), p. 386.
50 Patrizia Lombardo, “Hippolyte Taine between Art and Science”, Yale French
Review (77, 1990), pp. 117–133.
51 Hippolyte Taine, sa vie et sa correspondance. Correspondance de jeunesse (Paris:
Hachette, 1905), p. 274.
52 Hippolyte Taine, Essais de critique et d’histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1858), p. ix.
53 Ibid., p. ii.
54 Hippolyte Taine, Histoire de la literature anglaise, 5 (Paris: Hachette, 1863),
p. 282.
55 Hippolyte Taine, Essai sur Tite-Live (Paris: Hachette, 1896), pp. 189–190.
56 Ibid., p. 282.
57 See Nathalie Richard, “L’Histoire comme problème de psychologie. Taine et la
psychologie du Jacobin”, Mille neuf cent. Revue d’histoire intellectuelle (20/1,
2002), pp. 153–172.
 History and the Social Sciences 29
58 Paul Lacombe, Taine, historien et sociologue (Paris: Giard & Brière, 1909),
p. 43.
59 Hippolyte Taine, De l’intelligence, 1 (Paris: Hachette, 1906), pp. 20–21.
60 See Jean-Paul Cointet, Taine: Un regard sur la France (Paris: Perrin, 2012).
61 Hippolyte Taine, Les Origines de la France comteporaine (Paris: Robert Laffont,
2011), p. 4. “There are laws in the social and moral world, Taine writes, as in
the physiological and physical world” (The Origines of Contemporary France.
The Modern Régime, p. 121.
62 Claude Digeon, La crise allemande de la pensée française (Paris: Presses univer-
sitaires de France, 1959).
63 Victor Giraud, Essai sur Taine (Paris: Hachette, 1902), p. 87.
64 Gabriel Monod, Les Maîtres de l’histoire, Renan, Taine, Michelet (Paris:
Calmann-Lévy, 1894), p. 123.
65 Hippolyte Taine, Les Origines de la France comteporaine, p. 134.
66 Jean-Paul Cointet, Hyppolite Taine: Un regard actuel sur la France (Paris: Perrin,
2012), pp. 285–287.
67 Antoine Augustin Cournot, “Considérations sur la marche des idées et des évé-
nements dans les temps modernes”. In Œuvres complètes (Paris:Vrin, 1973),
p. 205.
68 Ernest Renan, “L’Avenir de la science” (1890), 3, p. 848. See Annie Petit, “Le
prétendu positivisme de Renan”, Revue d’histoire des sciences humaine, 8, 2003,
pp. 73–101.
69 Hippolyte Taine quoted in Jean-Thomas Nordmann, “Taine et le positivisme”,
Romantisme (21–22, 1978), p. 23.
70 Guy Dholquois, Histoire de la pensée historique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1991),
p. 166.
71 Keith Gore, L’Idée de progress dans la pensée de Renan (Paris: Nizet, 1970),
p. 83.
72 Henri Bergson, “La Philosophie”. In La science française (Paris: Larousse, 1915),
p. 23.
73 In Taine’s case we could use the term “scientism” instead of “comtism”. See
Henri Gouhier, Foreword. In Hippolyte Taine, La Philosophie classique du XIXe
siècle (Paris/Genève: Ressources, 1979), p. 5.
74 See D. D. Rosca, L’influence de Hegel sur Taine théoricien de la connaissance et
de l’art (Paris: Gamber, 1928).
75 On Taine and Comtism, see Jean-Paul Cointet, Taine: un regard sur la France
(Paris: Perrin), 2012, pp. 161–165.
76 Émile Bréhier, Histoire de la philosophie, XIXe-XXe siècles, 3 (Paris: Presses uni-
versitaires de France, 1991), pp. 813–814.
2 Contrasting Approaches
to Scientific History

The scientific approach to the study of history owes more to the work of
professional historians than to that of philosophers. Beginning in the last
two or three decades of the 19th century, there were many historians labor-
ing to construct a science of history. Charles-Victor Langlois insisted that
the advent of scientific history could not be attributed to any one historian,
but was the result of a collective and anonymous effort.1 To tell the truth,
this assertion does not take us very far.
In dating the birth certificate of scientific history, we could, of course,
take the first works where this expression is explicitly used. But to do so runs
the twin risks of overlooking, on one hand, the important contributions in
which this phrase does not appear and, on the other hand, of lingering too
long over attempts that, while they claimed to represent scientific history,
are of secondary importance. We will have to make some choices, then, and
to focus on those contributions that seem most fertile. A sample of carefully
selected perspectives can give us an overview of the field of scientific history.
The work of Fustel de Coulanges can surely be taken as marking the
origins of scientific history. His role was that of a pioneer, an innovator. He
is a perfect example of the revival of historical scholarship in France in the
last third of the 19th century. Although he was a contemporary of Taine
and Renan, he stands in contrast to them in a very specific aspect: he was a
historian by training and by profession. This is not just a question of aca-
demic qualification, for Fustel de Coulanges actually worked and thought as
a historian. He shunned all speculation and insisted on adhering rigorously
to empirical facts. His method, which heralded Durkheimian sociology, is
better defined than that of any other historian of his time.
We may speak here of a dual rupture: a rupture with romanticism, on one
hand, and a rupture with the philosophy of history, on the other.
But the rise of scientific history did not imply a unanimous rejection of
the philosophy of history. The works of Louis Bourdeau are a case in point.
This reader of Auguste Comte was preoccupied with the progress of scien-
tific knowledge, and he was in open revolt against the method of his contem-
porary historians. His plan was to arrive at a philosophical interpretation of
human development. In his principal work, L’Histoire et les historiens (1888),
32 The Idea of Scientific History
intended as a pre-emptive manifesto against “events-based” history,
Bourdeau argues for a seamless history, free of all of discontinuities, where
the individual is caught up in an irresistible necessity, and where the object
of attention is the development of reason. Bourdeau dreams of using statis-
tics to turn history into a true social science. Many of his ideas evoke sociol-
ogy and point to the eventual development of a historical demography.
Paul Lacombe also tried to revive the philosophy of history, but without
necessarily dismissing the singular and the accidental which, according to
him, can contain the seeds of the general and the institutional. The indi-
vidual fact, for Lacombe, becomes interesting for science only when it is
institutionalized through imitation and emulation. Thus, in several of his
works, Lacombe tries to define a stance vis-à-vis the discipline of sociology.
On one hand, he cites Comte and Durkheim, and on the other, Cournot
and Tarde. This interest in diverse perspectives can be explained only by the
constant concern for synthesis that runs through all of Lacombe’s work, and
that bears some obvious similarities to the theses of Henri Berr.
This renewed philosophy of history, however, failed to excite enthusiasm
among the majority of professional historians. Charles Seignobos and his
collaborator Charles-Victor Langlois took a strong stand against all philo-
sophical interpretations of history. They were certain that history, rather
than miring itself in speculation, must adopt a precise and rigorous method.
And very early on, these two authors were convinced that the document was
the royal road to objective and scientific learning.
These varied approaches constitute a fair sampling of the main perspec-
tives that we find under the banner of scientific history. They are also inter-
esting because of their stance with regard to the sociological tradition of
the time.

Fustel de Coulanges and the Beginnings

of Scientific History
Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889), one of the most important historians
of the second part of the 19th century, is the true originator of scientific
history. We shall not go into a detailed analysis of the varied intellectual
output of this eminent historian, as there are already some excellent trea-
tises on the subject.2 Our objective is more specific: to show the ways
by which Fustel de Coulanges seeks to develop a history that is treated
scientifically and how this is defined in relationship to the new discipline
of sociology.

Fustel de Coulanges and the Historical Science of His Time

The role played by Fustel de Coulanges in developing the discipline of his-
tory in France is in many ways that of a pioneer. He was not, of course,
the first to promote a scientific approach to history, but he was the first to
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 33
propose a rigorously defined method for such a science. Although he never
wrote a treatise on method, his concern for method was very real, and we
find many methodological fragments scattered in various guises throughout
his work.
This method is constructed in the polemic tradition.3 Fustel de Coulanges
wanted above all to break away from the historical tradition of his time,
which was that of romanticism. And the best representative of that tradition
was, without a doubt, Michelet. In the romantic recitation, as we know,
the author maintains a privileged, almost intimate rapport with his subject;
he openly confesses his feelings and his emotions. In short, his pen is con-
stantly governed by the state of his soul and its anxieties. The preface to Jules
Michelet’s Histoire de France, written in 1869, constitutes the finest possible
example of this: “I have put my whole life into this book. It is the only thing
that ever happened to me. But is there not a danger in this identity between
book and author? [. . .] If this is a failing, we must confess that it serves us
well. The historian who is devoid of it, who tries to efface himself and not to
be part of what he is writing, is not a historian at all [. . .] It is history, over
the course of time, that makes the historian, and not the other way around”.4
History and the historian become mingled. Michelet converses with history:
the time in which he lived provided him a perfect tryst.
In the eyes of Fustel de Coulanges, such an approach is the very antithesis
of science, it is “pure rêverie”. “Proper method” demands, on the contrary,
that the historian must avoid any personal identification with his subject,
that he must be neutral and impartial; his surest guide is not his emotions,
but rather the facts. In his Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne
France, Fustel de Coulanges writes what could be taken, in many respects,
as methodological guidelines for the historians of his time: “To put one’s
personal ideas into the study of texts is the subjective method. The historian
may believe he is looking at an object, but it is his own idea that he is seeing
[. . .]. Many people think however that it is useful and good for the historian
to have preferences, some ‘master ideas’, some higher concepts. The best
historian is the one who cleaves most closely to the texts, who interprets
them fairly and accurately, and who does not write or even think except as
they dictate”.5
We might say that, in writing these lines, Fustel de Coulanges was react-
ing directly to Michelet’s famous preface. It is certain, in any case, that
Fustel de Coulanges read Jules Michelet, although he does not cite him. The
two historians were of different generations: Michelet was born in 1802,
Fustel de Coulanges in 1830. Here, what is novel with scientific history in
comparison to romanticism is not its reliance on the document, for Michelet
also consulted documents, but rather the concern for objectivity. This deter-
mination to create a science, a “pure science”, as Fustel so earnestly desired,
was quite foreign to Michelet.
It was in an intellectual climate dominated by Michelet and his disciples
that Fustel de Coulanges learned the trade of the historian. Very early on,
34 The Idea of Scientific History
Fustel de Coulanges struck a lonely figure within the community of his-
torians. At first glance, indeed, it is difficult to identify his work with any
particular system of thought or any one doctrine.
In the first place, Fustel de Coulanges was not a specialist. He never
confined himself to studying a given period of human history; his research
embraced vast episodes in time: “the historian is not really fulfilling his
purpose unless he can embrace a long series of centuries”.6 Perhaps because
of the resounding success of his book La Cité antique, Fustel de Coulanges
has often been thought of as a specialist in antiquity. Yet he was nothing of
the sort, as François Hartog has shown so clearly.7 If Fustel de Coulanges
had a perfect knowledge of that time, he never restricted himself to it. In
fact, he devoted most of his writings to the history of medieval and modern
France. When we look at the development of his thinking, we are amazed
by the breadth and diversity of the works that piled up under his name. At
one moment, he is writing about ancient and medieval history, at the next,
he is tackling the political and social problems of his own time—which,
of course, brought him, like many others, to think about the causes of the
1870–71 debacle. And sometimes, he is discussing method and attempting
to define the field of history.
On the ideological level, Fustel de Coulanges sought to be discrete and
independent. “The spirit of research and of doubt is incompatible with any
preconceived idea, any exclusive belief, any partisan mindset. There must
be no prejudices, either political or religious. The historian must be neither
a republican, nor a monarchist nor an anti-Catholic, for each of these opin-
ions makes the mind see things in a personal way”.8 In fact, as Carbonell
explains, Fustel de Coulanges’s stance “with regard to the major histori-
cal journals of his day reveals a man who, like his work, cannot be classi-
fied. He collaborates as much with the Revue des questions historiques, the
mouthpiece of the Catholic and Royalist school, as with the Revue histo-
rique, which has to some extent succeeded the Revue critique as the plat-
form of the rival school”.9
Fustel de Coulanges’s work is that of an erudite loner patiently collating
documents. He claimed no doctrine, he knew no master, and he attracted
very few disciples, among whom Camille Jullian and Paul Guiraud. But
Fustel de Coulanges was more of an instigator than a bystander. As Gabriel
Monod stressed, he was a man of learning, “scornful of the beaten path and
of received opinions”.10 Consequently, it is hard to make out precisely the
influences that worked on him. For him, the science of history had yet to
be developed, and its method had yet to be constructed. He believed that
there were no models to be followed or imitated. “The interest that Fustel
de Coulanges took in his predecessors was only to do battle with them”,
writes Camille Jullian: “their effect on him was only to evoke a reaction”.11
Fustel de Coulanges was “independent with respect to the others”, noted
Georges Pellissier.12 In short, Paul Guiraud concluded, Fustel de Coulanges
“was always his own man”.13
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 35
These portraits, sketched by disciples of Fustel de Coulanges, had the
common characteristic of being enthusiastic and exalted, but they were not
fully in accord with reality. It is true that Fustel de Coulanges had an innova-
tive mind, but it cannot be claimed that his thinking was unmarked by any
external influence. One can draw comparisons between Fustel de Coulanges
and certain authors. His style, clear-cut and sober thanks to the rigor and
detail of his analysis, is reminiscent of Montesquieu or Tocqueville, and
indeed, he embraces the same liberal conception of history as do those writ-
ers. One might also see in his work, if perhaps indirectly, the influence of
François Guizot.
While Fustel de Coulanges strove to distance himself from his predeces-
sors, his reaction to the historians of his time was just as uncompromising.
When it came to discussing the work of a contemporary, his language was
often severe and rarely conciliatory. In the course of his career, he was con-
stantly embroiled in some argument or conflict over method. His life was,
in fact, a true intellectual battle. He was quick to correct any historian who,
in his view, did not practice “proper method”.
A well-known example will illustrate this. In 1887, toward the end of his
life, Fustel de Coulanges took aim at Gabriel Monod, the young director of
the Revue historique. He set out to expose the failings of Monod’s method
in the pages of the Revue des questions historiques, the great rival to the
Revue historique. The debate concerned a text of Gregory of Tours, which
Monod seemed to have misinterpreted. Fustel de Coulanges’s tone is that of
the teacher instructing a pupil: “The analysis of a text, as that of a charter,
an article of law, a letter, a historian’s account or a simple sentence, consists
in examining each of the elements of that text, establishing the meaning of
each word, and discovering the true thought of the person who wrote it”.14
Monod, insists Fustel de Coulanges, does not adhere to this scientific rigor:
“If M. Monod had done a real analysis he would have taken each word of
the historian one by one, he would have sought its meaning, and above all
he would have traced the author’s thinking in each line, and he would have
discerned the fact, the usage, or the institution that the author had in mind
in writing that line. Instead, he proceeds differently. He takes each sentence
of Gregory of Tours in turn, but rarely does he explain it”.15 A serious fail-
ing indeed! Further on, Fustel de Coulanges accuses Monod of subjectivism.
“Instead of studying the object in itself, you apply to it your own personal
ideas. You believe you are looking at the object, but you are really look-
ing only at your own thought. You are dominated by your own thought to
the point that you see only it, and you see it everywhere. Therein lies the
greatest cause of error when it comes to history. If history is the most dif-
ficult of sciences, it is because it demands that the researcher must be free
of any preconceived idea”. And Fustel de Coulanges cites the example of
the natural sciences to give greater authority to his view: “in physics and
chemistry, there is less danger of preconceived ideas, because experiments,
at least, are always performed independently of the experimenter’s ideas. In
36 The Idea of Scientific History
history, a thought that occupies the mind can distract the researcher to the
point where a text may appear to him the opposite of what it is”.16

History as a “Pure Science”

In his repeated insistence that history is a pure science, it is clear that Fustel
de Coulanges is trying to distance scientific history from literary history.
Before being a writer, the historian must be a scholar. “I am a scholar by
habit, I slave over texts”, he says modestly. “I am fully aware of what I lack
to be a writer”.17 Of course, Fustel de Coulanges had all the talents of a
writer. But he was so fearful of being associated with the literary movement
of his time that he seemed irritated when the quality and rigor of his style
were praised. His main worry was that style might mask the scientific char-
acter of history. For him, dialogue between art and science was impossible.
Tourneur-Aumont offers a revealing anecdote on this score, recalling that
Fustel de Coulanges “disliked the name of the ‘Faculty of Letters’ because he
thought it misrepresented the nature of the historical science he was teach-
ing there”.18
Scientific investigation demands that the researcher maintain an objective
detachment with respect to his subject, as the ethnologist does when exam-
ining the habits and customs of a society different from his own. The his-
torian must study the past without sympathy, without making judgments,
and without taking the present as reference, for history is an autonomous
matter that explains itself. How can such neutrality be achieved? Fustel
de Coulanges replies: “we are bound to be mistaken about these ancient
peoples if we regard them through the prism of the opinions and facts of
our own time. To know the truth about these ancient peoples, it is best to
study them without thinking of ourselves, as if they were complete strang-
ers to us”.19 Each people has its own peculiarities, and the historian must
take these into account without interference: “Greece and Rome present to
us an absolutely inimitable character. Nothing in modern times resembles
them”.20 These passages from La Cité antique contain some valuable meth-
odological pointers. They expose the thorny problem of temporal distance.
Man changes, along with his institutions, his beliefs and his customs, but
the historian changes more than anyone. Consequently, the historian of the
19th century does not have the same vision of past events as did one who
lived through them. Unfortunately, according to Fustel de Coulanges, the
historian is too often a prisoner of the present. “History needs to under-
stand the institutions, the beliefs, the customs, the entire life of a society, its
way of thinking, the interests that contend within it, the ideas that guide it.
On all these points our view is utterly obscured by preoccupation with the
present”.21 It is imperative, then, “not to judge with our modern ideas.”22
The best way to study ancient societies objectively is to consult the play-
ers of their era, to sift through the traces that they have left in documents.
“It seems to us that, if we want to understand antiquity, the first rule should
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 37
23
be to rely on the testimony that it has bequeathed us”. In fact, the histo-
rian must in his mind transpose himself into the midst of past generations
and “judge according to the ideas of their time, not those of today. The his-
torian is not supposed to tell us what he thinks personally, he must instead
tell us what the people of that time were thinking”.24 The present is of no
use for understanding the past: “history is a science; it proceeds according to
a rigorous method; it must see the facts as they were seen by their contempo-
raries, and not as the modern mind imagines them”.25 Plato, Virgil, Homer,
Sophocles—these were men of their times, and consequently, it is they who
must serve as our guide for explaining antiquity. They are direct witnesses.
According to Fustel de Coulanges, the more “direct” the knowledge that
history achieves, the closer it will be to a science. We must, then, “take the
ancient texts to the letter, as far as possible”26 and “accept nothing as true
that is not documented”.27
At first sight, the document is neutral and objective: it allows us to side-
step the historical pitfall of metaphysical speculation. “History is not some-
thing to be pursued through the imagination. It is a science, and it must
proceed through observation. If we are to have the right to say that an
ancient society had this or that institution or regime, then the documents
left to us from that society must contain evidence of such an institution
or regime. Without documents, there can be only fantasy and error”.28 In
short—no documents, no history.
A word of caution is in order here, however: the historian must not accept
sources without critical examination, for “science does not dwell in docu-
ments; it dwells in the intelligence that knows and understands the various
documents”.29 Given the abundance of documents, the historian must be
a “doubter” in the Cartesian sense—he must free himself of all religious,
political or ideological precepts.
The historian must doubt, but he must also compare. In a way, the com-
parative method can protect the science of history from what Fustel de
Coulanges dismissively called “specialism”: “It is undeniable that the com-
parative method is not only useful but indispensable”.30 But that method
brings with it some risks—comparison can lead to subjectivity. If the com-
parative method prevails, warns Fustel de Coulanges, “history will cease to
be a science and will degenerate into daydreaming”.31 The Cité antique is a
fine example of comparative scholarship. In it, Fustel de Coulanges shows
both the analogies and the differences between the religious beliefs of Greeks
and Romans, and some of his conclusions point directly to Durkheimian
sociology.32 The comparative analysis is confined here to societies that are at
roughly the same stage of intellectual and material development. The situ-
ation becomes problematic when one compares different eras. The histo-
rian of the 19th century must not compare ancient societies in terms of the
upheavals of his own time or his personal concerns, as Fustel de Coulanges
criticized Gabriel Monod for doing. Herein lies the great difficulty of the his-
torian’s trade: despite all the external temptations and the appeals of his own
38 The Idea of Scientific History
milieu, he must remain neutral and objective. That may be the methodologi-
cal ideal, but the reality is different, and Fustel de Coulanges is well aware of
this: “everyone knows that comparison is the basis for all human reasoning.
Even when we open our eyes and see, we are really making a comparison or a
series of comparisons, without thinking about it. When we observe a histori-
cal fact, there is in our mind a term of comparison, even if we do not realize
it”.33 Nevertheless, Fustel de Coulanges concludes, the comparative method,
“so dangerous for those who misuse it, is still essential to the historian”.34

As History Meets Sociology

The Cité antique represented a break with the historiographic tradition of
his time. Marking the centenary of Fustel de Coulanges’s birth, Camille
Jullian insisted that his work “had its origins in a moral aspiration, and he
was proclaiming a way of understanding the past; he suggested the method
for retrieving and recognizing it and, in the end, he prepared the way for a
new science”.35 A new science, of course, demands a new method. “Here
we have ancient peoples’ beliefs that seem to us wrong and ridiculous. Yet
they held sway over men for a great many generations. They governed souls,
they ruled societies, and they were the source of most domestic and social
institutions”.36 The proposed method, then, is objective: it absolutely pro-
hibits any kind of value judgment. It points the way to comprehending the
strangeness of ancient beliefs.
The method also combines a history of institutions. “The oldest institu-
tions are the ones it is most important for us to know. For these institutions
and the beliefs that we find in the glory days of Greece and Rome are only
the development of previous beliefs and institutions, and we must search for
their roots far back in the past. It is in an older era, in an antiquity without
date that beliefs were formed and institutions established or prepared”.37
It is clear here that we are not dealing with a romantic historian. Fustel de
Coulanges shows a lively curiosity for the study of the forms of sociability.
Throughout his work, he attributes primal causality to religion. In ancient
times, he maintains, nothing can be explained without taking religion into
account; it was around religion that individuals grouped themselves, that
families were constituted, that the law was organized and that social life
took shape and disintegrated. “The ancient family was a religious associa-
tion even more than an association imposed by nature”.38 “The foundation
of a city was always a religious act”.39
Human communities, then, take shape as a function of beliefs. The more
closely individuals and groups draw together, the more religion tends to sim-
plify itself, and the pantheon of divinities shrinks in number. “The triumph
of Christianity marks the end of antique society. With the new religion, this
social transformation that began six or seven centuries earlier reaches its ful-
fillment”.40 A new fact of extreme importance appears: the State separates
itself from religion. “Jesus Christ taught that his kingdom was not of this
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 39
41
world; he thus put asunder what all antiquity had joined together”. The
history of antiquity is, then, the history of a belief. “We have constructed the
history of a belief. It becomes established: human society is constituted. It
changes: society passes through a series of developments. It disappears: the
face of society changes. This is the law of ancient times”.42
The thesis defended in La Cité antique is a sociological one. As Henri
Berr asserted, Fustel de Coulanges “had the merit of concerning himself
with what sociologists so often overlook, the action of ideas on events”.43
Like the sociologists, Fustel de Coulanges gives pride of place to method
and proposes a theoretical model for understanding the social mutations of
ancient human societies. In short, he seeks to explain the primitive forms
of sociability.44 Yet, it is certain that Fustel de Coulanges would have been
strongly opposed to having his name associated with sociology. The very
word “sociology” got his dander up. At the beginning of his Alleu et le
domaine rural he confesses: “I do not like the word sociologie, not because
it is new but because it is too ambitious; I prefer the word historique, which
has fewer pretensions and conveys the same meaning”. In the intellectual
context of the time, Fustel de Coulanges’s reasoning is perfectly logical. If,
from this perspective, the word “sociology” and the word “historic” have
the same meaning, how then can one justify the existence of sociology as
an autonomous science? In other words, if history is practiced scientifically,
sociology must either disappear or (and this amounts to the same thing) be
subsumed into historical analysis. “This word ‘sociology’ is an invention of
the last few years”, he complains. “The word ‘history’ had the same mean-
ing and said the same thing, at least for those who understood it correctly.
History is the science of social facts, which is to say it is sociology itself”.45
The nascent sociology could not be completely in disagreement with such
a remark. Indeed, Durkheim gives us the proof with the first issue of the
Année sociologique: “Fustel de Coulanges loved to repeat that the only true
sociology is history: nothing could be more incontestable, provided history
is done sociologically”.46 As Georges Lefebvre points out, “without claim-
ing to be a sociologist, Fustel de Coulanges practices a method that tends
naturally towards sociological conclusions”.47 “His historical method had
a sociological and humanist purpose”, remarks Tourneur-Aumont.48 Fustel
de Coulanges was “the psychologist of the masses and of eras”, concludes
the historian Gabriel Hanotaux.49
Fustel de Coulanges—and this is to his credit—did what historians have
often neglected or scorned: he thought carefully about his trade and about
the limits of his discipline. Better than anyone else of his time, he demon-
strated the conditions for a scientific history. Not satisfied with simple narra-
tion, he attempted, as La Cité antique proves, to make history a theoretical
discipline. While this effort earned him the praise of Taine,50 it attracted the
criticism of many contemporary historians. Charles Morel, writing in the
Revue critique, complained about the theoretical intent of La Cité antique.
“Fustel de Coulanges has been so preoccupied with demonstrating his
40 The Idea of Scientific History
theory that for him history does not exist and this leads him to inadmissible
conclusions. His book sets out to falsify history completely. Here he rejects
tradition because he finds it constraining; there he takes it up again because
he finds it supports his idea. In a word, there is not the least trace of his-
torical criticism. Everything is forced and exaggerated, nuances disappear
and the painting becomes a complete forgery. In short, he has failed, as all
will fail who try to construct history a priori”.51 This commentary serves to
emphasize the extent to which Fustel de Coulanges was seen as an outsider
among historians of the 1860s. Yet his method and his intentions would be
frequently imitated in the years 1870–1880 and beyond.
Fustel de Coulanges’s work pertains to a unique intellectual universe: that
of the developing social sciences. This is why, almost inevitably, he was the
first French historian to pose the problem of the relationships between his-
tory and sociology. He thus opened up a rocky path, one that would resonate
with fierce disputes among the many travelers who ventured down it. And, as
we shall see, most of the historians who championed scientific history would
be led to define their approach in terms of the new discipline of sociology.

The Positivism of Louis Bourdeau

We know little about the philosopher Louis Bourdeau (1824–1900).
Textbooks on the philosophy of history never mention him. In fact, as a
philosopher, his innovations were minimal, but as a historian, on the other
hand, he seems to have made some considerable contributions. Yet on that
score as well, his work has gone largely unappreciated. Writing in the Revue
historique, Gabriel Monod regrets that “the books of M. Bourdeau do not
have the reputation they deserve. Their time will come once people are con-
vinced that social science is not only the sole foundation of history but is in
fact the essence of history”.52
Bourdeau’s work is a perfect example of the grand attempts at synthesis
that appeared in such great numbers during the second half of the 19th cen-
tury. Bourdeau meditated on a great variety of subjects. Among his books
we may cite his scientific treatise, Théorie des sciences (1882), and in par-
ticular his polemical work, L’Histoire et les historiens (1888). The first does
not deal with history, but it seems to lay out the basis for his entire thinking.
In this book—written at a high level of abstraction—the author strives to
separate general science from particular science, and he tries to implement
the principles of comprehensive science, a “master science”, in reaction to
the splintering of knowledge that was taking place at his time.
French science, however, had grown all too accustomed to the appear-
ance of these heavy and abstract treatises proposing new classifications of
the sciences, and Louis Bourdeau’s undertaking aroused little interest. The
solution to the problem that Bourdeau poses in his Théorie des sciences is
resolved to a large extent in his other book, L’Histoire et les historiens. At last,
he has found the “master science”, and he identifies it clearly—it is history.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 41
Bourdeau is evidently thinking of a historical discipline overhauled to its core:
a historical discipline that no longer focuses on particular facts but rather on
necessity, a new discipline that can give rise to general laws. The problem is
that history is almost never practiced in this way, and that is why, Bourdeau
insists, it must be given a new methodological approach. Bourdeau’s inten-
tion, as convoluted as it is, cannot be completely grasped without viewing it
in parallel with his previous thinking about the future of science.

Outline of a Theory of Science

The Théorie des sciences was published by the Germer Baillière house in
two hefty volumes in 1882. It was, in fact, the first published work of Louis
Bourdeau, who was then 58 years old. In it, he develops a complex classifi-
cation of the sciences, along Comtean lines. Upon its appearance, the work
was either ignored or subjected to sharp criticism by those who deigned to
read it seriously. An anonymous author writes, in the Revue philosophique,
“in 50 years, the work of Comte. will still represent what it does today, a
historical document of the greatest importance for the state of the sciences at
a given time; as for M. Bourdeau’s tome, it will be far from meeting the con-
ditions that such a document must satisfy”.53 Yet the book is a perfect illus-
tration of its time: it speaks to us of the splintering of knowledge, the signs
of which became increasingly evident in the last third of the 19th century.
As a spectator aghast at the proliferation of scientific disciplines, Bourdeau
complains: “Thus zoology has had to divide up the entire animal kingdom
into discrete segments, and now we have independent sciences for zoophy-
tology, malacology, helminthology, ornithology, mammalogy, anthropology
[. . .] Every one of these partial sciences is in turn broken down to the point
where we are left with species-specific monographs. Anthropology, a much
reduced segment of zoology, has been split into a multitude of branches,
depending on whether we are considering physical man (anatomy, physi-
ology, medicine, ethnography), moral man (psychology, ethics, aesthetics,
morals) or social man (philology, history, political economy, law)”.54 The
historical discipline has been subjected to an analogous principle, and Louis
Bourdeau is worried: “History, by applying the same system, divides its
immense subject matter by regions, by eras, by states, by series of events, and
in the end it loses its way in the minutia of biographies and anecdotes”.55
Nothing could be more pernicious for scientific knowledge in general than
to attach too much value to specialized studies. They give us “only parts of
knowledge, always on the point of dissolving into fragments. No one consid-
ers science in the fullness of its developments and no one has a real sense of
their unity”.56 Bourdeau, then, proposes to erect knowledge into a system.
Every system, of course, must start with a classification: “partial reforms
were not enough; there had to be a complete overhaul. The classification
of the sciences must embrace and coordinate all knowledge”. Like Auguste
Comte, Bourdeau was encyclopedic in his fields of interest. In fact, he
42 The Idea of Scientific History
wanted to carry forward the work of Comte. Yet his orthodoxy was not
absolute. Bourdeau takes issue with the Comtean system on a very specific
point. In his classification, Comte accepted six general sciences: as Bourdeau
sees it, however, astronomy, biology and sociology are not general sciences,
but particular sciences. “The reform, then, has gone only halfway”. Comte’s
theory of sciences “is thus both insufficient and defective. It needs to be
completed and rectified”.57 Comte had not cast off the yoke of metaphysics:
he wanted, above all, to institute a general philosophy and not a general sci-
ence. Bourdeau’s project was to promote a “comprehensive science”. What
are the general sciences, and what is their subject matter? What are the fac-
tors for integrating the sciences? And how can we define that integration?
First, Louis Bourdeau argues that the shape or object of the general sci-
ences is enshrined in nature, and as he sees it, there are seven “aspects of
nature”: 1, existence; 2, scale; 3, collocation; 4, modality; 5, composition; 6,
structure; and 7, functions. In this way, according to Bourdeau, we will quite
naturally find seven sciences that will explain this series of diverse phenom-
ena: 1, logic, the science of realities; 2, mathematics, the science of scale; 3,
dynamics, the science of situations; 4, physics, the science of modalities; 5,
chemistry, the science of combinations; 6, morphology, the science of forms;
and 7, praxeology, the science of functions. According to Bourdeau, each of
the branches of knowledge follows the same intellectual path: “The subject
matter of a science resembles a vast tapestry in which we must examine each
thread separately in order to determine the matter, and then consider how
they are put together to form the fabric. In any subject of study we must first
scrutinize the facts one by one, delving into the details as far as possible, and
then compare them so as to understand their order”.58 He identifies here two
essential stages of scientific knowledge: analysis and synthesis.
Can history combine these two aspects inherent to any scientific
approach? Or is it destined to remain a literary genre?

History, the Science of Reason

“History has to be completely remade, or rather, it is not yet made. The very
fundamentals of the science have yet to be established. The edifice awaits its
architects. At most we can say that the past has bequeathed us the materi-
als. For a science to be constituted, there are several conditions that must be
met: first, its subject matter must be clearly defined; next, the problems to be
resolved, arranged by order of increasing complexity, must comprise a ratio-
nal program; there must also be a method that can shed light on the truths
sought; lastly, the knowledge acquired must be capable of formulation into
laws”.59 This stern assessment, issued as a reproof at the outset of his book,
L’Histoire et les historiens, poses a direct challenge to the practice of history,
and it sets the polemical tone for the entire work. From an epistemological
viewpoint, Louis Bourdeau argues, historians betray some glaring lacunae:
“they are not at all concerned to determine clearly the function of history
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 43
in the order of the sciences”. The same goes for their methodology: “just
how far should we drag out the details, the ins and outs of famous events?
They do not tell us. The frontier remains unclear; each one places the mark-
ers according to his whim”.60 It is up to scientific history to eliminate these
arbitrary local diversities in order to provide us with universal and positive
knowledge, on a par with the natural sciences.
History, then, needs to change its program and its method. The solution,
as Bourdeau sees it, is simple and recalls the Comtean approach: history,
he argues, must above all define itself as “the science of the development of
reason”, for it is reason that distinguishes the human species from other liv-
ing beings. “If man, through his organization, compares himself to animals
and ranks himself among them, and even if he can be assimilated to them by
his baser modes of activity, reflexivity, instinct and intelligence, his reason
raises him above all living creatures, and constitutes, in the order of physical
functions, a kind of separate kingdom, as superior to the animal kingdom
as the latter is to the plant kingdom, and as both of those kingdoms are
to the inorganic world of minerals”.61 We see, then, that reason, which is
the defining characteristic of the human species, is considered here from an
evolutionary perspective: “It is the fourth kingdom, the human kingdom,
characterized by the exercise of reason, which science aspires to know after
the other three”. Consequently, the subject matter of positive history “must
clearly embrace the universe of the facts that reason directs or that influence
it. Wherever human beings live, wherever they exercise their reason, and
wherever the species works on itself to accomplish changes, there is where
the stuff of history is made”.62 “The true subject matter of history, the only
one that is important to know, is the order of the functions of reason”.63 For
reason, Bourdeau concludes, is the soul of humanity and is its surest guide.

Critique of Traditional Historiography

This celebration of scientific history quickly takes on the aspect of a meth-
odological crusade. Louis Bourdeau asserts, first, that historians make “of
the human species two unequal parts: they place famous men on one side,
and the vast unknown masses on the other side, and they decide that the
first alone deserve attention in their stories”.64 In this way, historians neglect
the bulk of mankind, for “there are very few famous men in comparison
with those who are not. Can science, without betraying its mandate, sacri-
fice the countless mass of obscure people to a handful of illustrious men, or
those presumed to be so? What would you think of a geographer who, in
any description of the earth, was content to mention only the highest moun-
tains?”65 Bourdeau roundly condemns the history of elites à la Carlyle: “it
is sheer mockery to proffer the history of the king as that of a people and
to suppress the human race for the greater glory of a few heroes. Humanity
can be properly represented only by itself”.66 And he adds: “Human nature
is one. The hero and the common man are molded from the same clay”.67
44 The Idea of Scientific History
Any individual action, however innovative it may appear, is the result of
necessary causes. “Progress is the joint result of a multitude of anonymous
activities, rather than the revelations of a few geniuses”. “Glorious personi-
fications have only poetic value. In them we admire our ideal”.68 Progress
comes from the mental activity of humanity, Bourdeau tells us, reflecting the
great influence of Auguste Comte’s ideas: “Progress occurs at a slow and
measured pace, following the stages of a continuous evolution. Yet historians
see only one moment of that evolution, the moment when things come to a
conclusion. They forget its mysterious conception, its painful gestation, its
successive advances, and sometimes, in the confusion of the event, they even
mistake the midwife or the wet nurse for the mother”.69 With Bourdeau,
then, there is a constant intermingling of methodology and polemics.
Throughout his work, Louis Bourdeau is at pains, with the help of numer-
ous examples, to downplay the creative action of the individual. Thus, “there
is no such thing as true invention, there are only improvements. Inventors
come and go, each adds something, none creates anything. Any discovery
you care to mention had its way paved by previous discoveries, and in turn
it makes other discoveries possible”.70 Even when it comes to art, individual
contributions are enveloped in an implacable necessity: “To the seemingly
simple question, who is the author of such-and-such masterpiece, historians
will always reply with a proper name. They hold each work of art to be an
individual creation and they will never admit that a child can have several
fathers. Yet when we look at it closely, the problem becomes more com-
plex and, after some thought, we find ourselves compelled to admit that
the author of a masterpiece is in fact everyone”.71 And in science: “we owe
almost everything to the legions of nameless explorers”. Scientific knowl-
edge is first and foremost a collective good: “in terms of scientific notions,
almost nothing is due to an individual—everything is due to everyone [. . .]
Taken as a whole, science is less the creation of a privileged elite than the
conquest of a multitude of obscure researchers”.72 The moral tendencies of
a collectivity can be explained by an analogous movement: “statistics show
that, among a given people, the number of crimes, misdemeanors, suicides
etc. and even the number of different types of crimes, misdemeanors or
suicides, varies little from one year to the next, offering proof that, underly-
ing what seem to be personal initiatives, there is a general and fixed causa-
tion at work”.73 This denigration of the individual, in its many forms, leads
Bourdeau into the last redoubts of holism.
In these ideas we can discern the outline of a program addressed to the
community of historians. Bourdeau’s work often leaves the impression, in
fact, that it is but a pretext for giving historians a stern lesson in methodology.
Some passages are squarely in the form of recommendations: “Trace from
age to age the movement of population, the state of public prosperity, and
show the causes that make for growth or decline; show the transformations
in tastes, the progress of science, the improvement in manners, the spread of
civil liberties. Do not fear to enter into detail on the most ordinary things.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 45
The history of food will be of interest to everyone who eats, the history of
clothing to everyone who is clad, the history of habitation to everyone who is
housed, the history of art to all people of taste, the history of ideas to anyone
who thinks, the history of morality to all people of good will”.74 These lines,
written in 1888, contain most of the elements that characterize what would
later be called the “new history”. We see in them already a history pursued in
multiple directions. We detect a clear determination to discover the principles
of demographic, economic and social history, and at the same time, we can
perhaps discern the first inklings of a history of mentalities. The resemblance
between Bourdeau’s program and that of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre,
outlined in the Annales, is surely striking.

The Importance of Quantitative Method in History

How is history to shed the yoke of narration? How is it to escape the trap
of metaphysics and the philosophy of history? How can history achieve
objectivity? We have already seen the answer that Louis Bourdeau offered
to these questions: human history is woven from restrictive consistencies,
from constant sequences, and it is the task of scientific history to bring
them to light. But how is this to be done? The enthusiasm for quantifica-
tion, in vogue since the beginning of the 19th century, offered a response
to the questions raised by Louis Bourdeau. He was profoundly convinced
that scientific history should forge close links with the nascent discipline of
statistics: “The entire future of historical scholarship depends on this new
science of statistics, which is still relegated to the shadows by its humble ori-
gins. It alone gives us the means to explore everyday life, to pursue in-depth
study and to establish an exact representation”.75 Statistics, then, offers the
best route to scientific accuracy: “The natural sciences, once freed from the
mindset of speculation and hypothesis, have had to submit their notions to
the test of calculation in order to constitute themselves in a positive state”.76
The explanatory power and the scientific value of history, then, depend
directly and solely on its capacity to become a quantitative science: “A
simple figure is often more explicit than a lengthy narrative. The tally of
killed and wounded, which conscientious historians sometimes mention at
the end of their account of a battle, does more to convey the heat of the
fray than does the picturesque recounting of its main incidents”. Statistics
takes little interest in exceptions and happenstance; it addresses the problem
of averages and of deviations, it develops probabilities. With statistics, we
can look forward to the development of a social and demographic history:
“The annual number of births provides the measure of a people’s fertility.
The number of deaths reveals its pathological continuum, the prevailing ill-
nesses, the relative healthiness of the region”.77
But that is not all. The statistical method also saves the historian from the
hazards of speculation. It is “too prosaic to lend imagination to the work.
It is not contaminated by any ideals. We no longer have to choose a subject
46 The Idea of Scientific History
because of its beauty, to sort out its picturesque elements, to coordinate them
artfully and to craft a brilliantly written story that will entice the literati; all
we have to do is count and add up, a straightforward operation that excludes
any subjective interference. Figures constitute the most perfect of languages”
for “they give us the best idea of scale. Calculating them is a task, not for
dreamers, but for men of science”. Statistical data spare the historian from
value judgments and personal inferences: “The study of general functions
leaves us calm because we feel ourselves powerless to change their order, and
we are licked in advance by the all-dominating force of the bare facts”.78
This faith in statistical method leads inevitably to a prophetic vision of
historical knowledge: “A reform must come, and it will be imposed either
by historians or upon them. The age of literary historiography is coming to
an end, and that of scientific history is about to begin”. But at the time when
Bourdeau was indulging in this optimism, the reform of historical knowl-
edge was progressing very slowly. The literary form still permeated historical
discussion. Bourdeau had a radical solution: “The time has come to divorce
the two methods (the narrative method and the statistical method) and to
apply them separately. Let the great writers compose their pretty stories and
let us insist that scholars finally produce a true history, from which we can
learn the developments and the laws of human activity”.79 That is the key
phrase, that is the objective of scientific history. By learning “the develop-
ments and the laws of human activity”, Bourdeau insists, we can not only
instruct ourselves about the past but we can, with due caution, predict the
future: “However great the historical interest in reconstructing the past, the
power to issue forecasts is of much greater value because, on one hand, it
submits the proposed laws to a decisive test and, on the other hand, it gives
us the means to apply those laws to our own lives”.80 From this perspective,
the timeframe of history no longer relates exclusively to the past: “hence,
no longer constrained by the limits of observation, our mind can encompass
time without bounds. Rediscovering what is no more, foreseeing what is not
yet, it takes both a retrospective and a prophetic view of things”.81 In this
way, history can inform us about the countless uncertainties of tomorrow.
That is why, Bourdeau concludes, history will one day be “the most fertile”
science. “The natural sciences tell us only how things are governed; history
will give us governance over our own activity. It will then have earned the
title of instructrice de la vie [teacher of life]. It is the master science. It tells
us about ourselves and our entire existence”.82
There is no need here to dwell on the awkward phrases or the somewhat
naïve and dogmatic passages that run through Bourdeau’s work. What is
important is to recognize in it an authentic attempt to construct a theory of
history.
What was original about Louis Bourdeau was his ability to conceive of
a historical science that was open to new horizons. Open to new subjects—
history would no longer content itself with the study of politics and events;
it would strive to understand the manners and customs of past societies.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 47
Open as well in terms of time—history would no longer be confined to
studying the past; it would also embrace the present and the future.
It is surprising that, in this book, Louis Bourdeau makes very little ref-
erence to the work of the historians of his time. Fustel de Coulanges is
barely mentioned, and Gabriel Monod is completely ignored. Curiously,
Louis Bourdeau limits himself primarily to quoting the historians of clas-
sical antiquity, such as Thucydides and Titus Livius, although he does dis-
cuss the philosophies of history put forward by Vico, Comte and Herder.
This reticence as to the historians of his time might perhaps explain why
his book attracted so little notice from the community of historians. Perhaps
he was seen as a man of the past in invoking Auguste Comte’s ideas. Or, on
the contrary, perhaps he was ahead of his time: his championing of statis-
tical method might suggest this. We can readily understand why Charles
Seignobos, the prime representative of “events-based” history at the turn of
the century, insisted that the “lamentable failure” of Bourdeau was to have
tried to apply statistics to historical facts.83 It is true that Bourdeau’s use of
statistical method was simplistic: his definition of its role was too cursory
and his ambitions for it were exaggerated. His haste to discredit the creative
force of the individual was surely unacceptable, and Henri Berr, as we shall
see, was emphatic about the limits of such determinism.
Yet the fact remains that, at the end of the 19th century, the work of
Bourdeau sounded the bell for change. From his lonely position on the side-
lines, Bourdeau was one of the first to challenge systematically the method
of his contemporary historians. And in other works, he urged them to study
such apparently insignificant subjects as the history of food. “Scornful of
the conditions of everyday life, historians find unseemly the curiosity that
attaches to this sound detail. They float in an ideal world, out of touch with
the needs of prosaic reality. There is little nourishment in their story [. . .]
For the exact science of human affairs, a bare meal menu is more instructive
than a blow-by-blow war story”.84 When we read such a passage, we can
only wonder why the works of Bourdeau received so little notice from the
historians of the Annales.85

The Historical Sociology of Paul Lacombe

Paul Lacombe (1834–1919) cannot be classified within the traditional limits
of specializations. His work embraces the fields of history, of sociology, of
economics, of psychology and of literature. But it is in the theory of history
that his contribution was most fruitful. Nevertheless, this concern for the
theory of history appears relatively late in his work. After a long career as
a historian, Lacombe saw the need to think carefully about the subject mat-
ter and the method of historical science. Numerous authors and currents of
thought influenced his theoretical approach. Although Lacombe read “in all
directions”, as his friend Henri Berr put it, he seems to have drawn his intel-
lectual inspiration from the French philosophers of the 19th century, and
48 The Idea of Scientific History
especially from Comte, Cournot and Taine. Nevertheless, Paul Lacombe’s
mind remained quite independent—he belonged to no school, and he could
not be linked to any particular current of thought.
In the last decade of the 19th century, Paul Lacombe wrote two major
works: De l’histoire considérée comme science (1894) and Introduction à
l’histoire littéraire (1898). His byline also appears frequently in the philo-
sophical journals of the day. In 1900, when Henry Berr founded the Revue
de synthèse historique, he became a loyal contributor to it. There is no
doubt that this journal, in which, as Berr tells us, “he felt right at home from
the outset”, was a fine match for Lacombe’s “theoretical preoccupations”
and that it gave him “the opportunity to refine his essential theses through
discussion and to market them through various applications”.86

Salvation Through Science

We may say at the outset that much of Paul Lacombe’s mature work is
devoted to answering a fundamental question: how and under what condi-
tions can history become a science? “To construct a science of history is a
task that we must attempt today. Not only does this mean employing the
countless materials that hitherto have been put to almost no use; there is
also an urgent need to relieve the human mind of a burden that has become
crushing. The only way to diminish the weight of the phenomena piled up in
the mind is by linking them, and that link can only be a scientific generaliza-
tion”.87 An individual fact taken in isolation is of little interest to science. As
with the natural sciences, history must look for similarities and repetitions
in order to arrive at general laws: “history, treated scientifically, searches
for laws”.88 Whence this definition of science: “What we call science is a set
of truths, that is to say propositions stating that there is a constant similar-
ity between such and such phenomena”.89 History had hitherto been noth-
ing but an anecdotal recitation, assembling a multitude of miscellaneous
facts. The reason for this was not hard to discern: historical science had no
method. This science, then, was still in its infancy. Much remained to be
done, as Lacombe insisted in the very first issue of the Revue de synthèse his-
torique: “In scientific history, we are no further ahead than chemistry was a
hundred years ago”.90 The solution, as Lacombe saw it, was simple: history
must pay less attention to “events than to significant facts that translate the
permanent needs of social life and the ongoing work of civilization”.91 And
these needs must be observed objectively, “coldly, rigorously, severely”.92
History would then become an inductive science.

Seeking a Compromise Between the Individual and the Institutional

Scientific history must then look for similarities. In what ways do people
resemble each other? What are the general traits of the human species?
Questions such as these show clearly that Lacombe was not only attempting
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 49
to propose a program for the science of history, but that he hoped to develop
a general theory of human behavior. “In spite of time and space, the prime
aims of humanity remain the same; the unavoidable needs of the body do
not and never will allow those aims to differ except within narrow lim-
its”.93 Here we have the backbone of a theory of history. The man seeking
to satisfy his needs, Paul Lacombe calls “the general man” (and we might
call him the “common man” or “everyman”): “Fundamental needs drive us
from within, but we can readily see them as external forces that pull us and
lead us”.94 These external forces flow from institutions. To understand the
meaning of history, we need to examine the institutions that correspond to
man’s fundamental needs. Those fundamental needs, Lacombe tells us, are
the following: economic, procreative [génésique], emotional [sympathique],
honorific, artistic and scientific. Institutions correspond to a combina-
tion of needs. Accordingly, Lacombe ranks eight institutions by order of
“urgency”: economic institutions, family institutions, moral and legal insti-
tutions, institutions of distinction or class, social [mondaines] institutions,
political institutions, artistic and literary institutions, scientific institutions
and religious institutions. In a series of works from his last years, Lacombe
set out to examine these various institutions and the problems associated
with them—an ambitious undertaking that he finally had to abandon.
The “general man” of whom Paul Lacombe speaks is, in fact, an abstrac-
tion. The “singular man”, on the other hand, is very real—he is the man
who belongs to a particular time or place. “It is the historical individual
considered in the effects that flow from his singular nature, and no longer
from the mental base that he has in common with the men of his time or
of all times”. Singular man, taken in isolation, is of no interest to science
because he is contingent, and contingency, Lacombe insists, “cannot be
completely explained”.95 Yet, Lacombe complains, it is in contingencies of
all kinds that historians have shown the greatest interest. General man and
singular man, then, are fundamental opposites, but at the same time they
are complementary. General man and singular man meet in what Lacombe
calls “temporal or historical man”. “In every individual there is the man of a
certain time and place (these always go together), the man who has ways of
thinking, feeling and acting that are neither singular nor general, but com-
mon to a more or less broad group: we shall call him temporal or historical
man”.96 In other words, “temporal man” is “general man”, “affected by a
particular set of circumstances or, if you will, by a specific milieu”.97
The concept of temporal or historical man speaks eloquently to the spirit
of synthesis that permeates Lacombe’s work: “Our century has reacted
against the preceding one, when there was much speculation about general
man; our century has chosen to accept only temporal and local man”. These
two tendencies are exaggerated and explain only part of historical reality,
for the general and the singular are “irrevocably embodied in any person”.98
A compromise is needed, then: Lacombe concludes that each person bears
the “triple seal” of the general, the temporal and the singular.
50 The Idea of Scientific History
In the end, the individual is the efficient cause of the general: “sociologi-
cal phenomena must first be translated into psychological terms, and then,
if we can, we must translate those psychological phenomena themselves into
biological language”.99
In L’homme et la guerre, Paul Lacombe makes some further concessions to
the individual person. “All of history, including the most recent, quite contem-
porary history, shows that a man made of the right stuff can impose his will on
a surprising number of his fellows; he can enlist an entire people or even several
peoples, half willingly, half by force or stealth, to follow the path of his choice.
Just consider the impact that Napoleon, Palmerston, Lincoln, Alexander II,
Cavour or Bismarck had, for good or ill, on the destiny of nations!”100 This
sounds like Charles Seignobos. Then, in his Introduction à l’histoire littéraire,
Lacombe develops a theory of knowledge in which he shows that the author
of a great work is not just a simple reflection of his milieu but, on the contrary,
is master of the process of artistic and scientific creation. Criticizing Taine’s
thesis for having misunderstood “what pertains to the individual”, Lacombe
writes, by way of example: “We cannot hope to explain a Racine by his time,
or a Plato by his race”. With respect to Racine, Lacombe notes that “he was a
profound psychologist, but he stayed within the limits—and those limits were
most certainly set by the time in which he lived”.101
Paul Lacombe concludes, then, that we must not consider institutions
as autonomous or sui generis, as Durkheim would have us do. On the con-
trary, “the institution starts with a man who begins to practice something
new, and then it gradually becomes the standard [. . .] Nor does an institu-
tion suddenly die—instead, it gradually shrinks and ends up, as it began, an
individual act, an event. We may say then that the institution is an event that
has been successful”.102 Gabriel Tarde would not have put it differently. The
point is that Lacombe too, it seems, was deeply convinced that imitation
provided the key to history.

Outline of a Psychologizing Theory of Human Evolution

Quite naturally, in pursuing his project, Paul Lacombe drew heavily upon
psychology, a science that was flourishing in the last decades of the 19th cen-
tury. “To understand general man”, he writes, “is the particular objective of
one science, psychology. Precisely because psychology delivers general man
to history, we already have the essential idea of the relationships that link
these two sciences”.103 In fact, history is merely “the application of psychol-
ogy in space and time”.104 The function of psychology is to allow historical
science to explain the evolution of human needs. “Any goal pursued, any
human aim has a cause: in the inner man, it is a mental state, which we may
call a need. Everything that calls a man from within to act beyond himself
will then for us be a need”.105 As Lacombe sees it, a need is a scientific fact
because it lies at the origin of institutions: it is for the purpose of satisfying
his needs that man has created institutions.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 51
It is “needs”, then, that drive all of human evolution. Lacombe regarded
those needs not as biological impulses but as psychological forces.
“Fundamental needs drive us from within, but we can readily see them as
external forces that pull us and lead us. These permanent forces constitute
the primordial causes of history”.106
When Lacombe speaks of the individual person [l’individu], he is clearly
not talking about the famous man, the political figure or the genius, but
about “general man”. “Science cannot cope with the great man: he is a
distraction”107—he belongs, in effect, to the contingent or the accidental.
According to Lacombe, it is imperative for all science to separate the general
(or the determinate) from the contingent (or the accidental), not in order to
contrast them, but in order to show their reciprocity.
How does this reciprocity work in practice? Invention, for example, is
first and foremost an individual deed, and yet behind the personal initiative
lurk permanent causes conditioned by the context, born of collective needs.
Thus, “the invention of printing could have taken place in ancient Greece
or Rome: the ancients had in papyrus the equivalent of paper, they had ink,
and they had punches. Yet it did not happen there. If the need to possess
books had had the compelling force of an economic need, such as the need
to possess money, for example, it is likely that printing would have been
invented in antiquity”.108
While it is true, by all evidence, that innovation can be stimulated by
resources proper to the time and place or by external conditions of all kinds,
the fact remains that it is initially contingent and fortuitous. “Once the indi-
vidual produces an innovation, society enters the scene; its role is to accept
or to reject the innovation, to imitate it or not, to respond to the event by
some or other intellectual and moral impression”.109
Here we have a shift from the contingent to the determinate. In other
words, the birth of things is fortuitous, but determination increases as things
endure over time. It is thanks to the phenomenon of imitation, Lacombe tells
us (echoing the sociologist Gabriel Tarde), that an event can be transformed
into an institution. Lacombe arrives at this conclusion: “What is most deter-
minate about the life of societies is that intelligence goes on expanding and
deepening. If we could believe that nature has a goal for us, we would say
that goal is the growth of human intelligence”.110 Yet despite this asser-
tion, Lacombe refuses to believe in the irreversible march of progress. In
many passages, indeed, he rejects an evolutionary reading of history of the
Comtean or Spencerian type. Progress does not follow a straight line: “Let
us accept the evidence: the Middle Ages were a time of regression at least on
some points. That is enough to make it illegitimate to consider progress as
a constant law, for if there has been regression on some points then, under
the effect of unknown circumstances, there could one day be regression on
other points or on all points”.111
History, which is of psychological inspiration, is therefore a synthetic
science: it synthesizes the general and the particular, the accidental and the
52 The Idea of Scientific History
institutional, the contingent and the necessary. This viewpoint leads directly
to the historical synthesis of Henri Berr, as we shall see.
The psychology to which Paul Lacombe refers is in a sense a collective
psychology, or sociology. Scientific history was interested in institutional
facts, as was the emerging sociology. But, as we have seen, Lacombe had no
use for the sociological determinism espoused by some authors of his time.
Far from rejecting the individual and the accidental, he takes them as a point
of departure, indeed as efficient cause, for the general and the institutional.
How, then, can we distinguish scientific history from sociology? In fact,
Lacombe saw no difference between the two disciplines, and he explained
his view clearly: “Since as we see it there are only two orders of works, one
corresponding to the search for reality, the other to the search for truth,
scholarship on one hand, history and sociology on the other, we could have
consistently used the word ‘sociology’ in place of ‘history’, especially as
‘sociology’ seems destined to prevail. We have however decided to keep
the term history [. . .] Under the heading of sociology, my work would run
the risk of promptly alienating all those who pursue scholarship or history
in the ordinary meaning of the word. Yet it is to those scholars, even more
than to the sociologists, I think, that this book is destined to be of some ser-
vice”.112 The real dividing line, then, lies not between historical science and
sociology, but between historical science and history.
Here, a paradox springs at us. Although Paul Lacombe claims to be
addressing the community of historians, he almost never cites the historians
of his own time. He is always careful to position himself in relation to the
sociological tradition. Nearly two decades after publication of L’histoire
considérée comme science, dealing with history as a science, Lacombe con-
fessed his intellectual membership in the sociological community: “In 1894
I published a work entitled L’histoire considérée comme science. Today, I
would probably give that book a different title, for it deals with subjects
to which the name of sociology is now by convention applied”.113 And if
Lacombe had really thought of himself as a sociologist, it is certain that
he would have tried to strike a compromise between Émile Durkheim
and Gabriel Tarde—or between a holistic approach and a individualistic
approach. To be convinced on this point, it is enough to consider this pas-
sage from De l’histoire considérée comme science in which Lacombe defines
society as “a group of people who accept mutual constraints and who imi-
tate each other particularly”.114 In other words, according to Paul Lacombe,
history is a mixture of necessity and contingency. He then almost perfectly
anticipated what later became known as “historical sociology”.

Langlois and Seignobos: The Argument

for Historical Method
Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos reacted sharply to the
attempts to resurrect a philosophy of history.115 Hostile to metaphysical
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 53
interpretations, suspicious of the relentless advance of the social sciences,
these two historians attempted at the end of the 19th century to codify his-
torical practice definitively, through their famous Introduction aux études
historiques.
This book, the first methological treatise in France, was an attempt to
define a scientific approach for history based on archives, away for phi-
losophy of history. In the 1890s, they both start to analyze the relationship
between history and social sciences, especially sociology.
Charles-Victor Langlois (1863–1929) was a medievalist. A pupil of
Ernest Lavisse, he studied in 1881 at the elite École nationale des chartes,
where he was trained as an archivist. He earned a degree in history in 1884
and three years later was awarded a doctorate in humanities. His thesis on
the reign of Philip the Bold (Philip III) attracted considerable attention. In
1888 he was appointed lecturer in “auxiliary sciences” at the Sorbonne,
where he held the chair in medieval history from 1909 to 1913. From 1913
to 1922, he was Director of the National Archives. During those years, he
contributed to the first series of the great Histoire de France directed by
Lavisse, for which he wrote the third volume dealing with St. Louis, Philip
the Fair and the last Capetians (1226–1328).116
Charles Seignobos (1854–1942) played an even more decisive role in the
development of historical scholarship in France. A pupil of both Fustel de
Coulanges and Ernest Lavisse, he was one of the most important historians
in France during the first two decades of the 20th century. He was the first
of the new generation of academics to propose a scientific definition of his-
torical method.117
At an early age, Seignobos was attracted to the scientific history champi-
oned by the German historian Leopold von Ranke. As many other histori-
ans had done before him, including Gabriel Monod and Camille Jullian, he
undertook a tour of study in Germany in the late 1870s.118 But he became
quickly disillusioned with the Germany that he had so idealized. The day of
the great teachers was passed, he noted bitterly, and what he now found in
its place was a “sterility” imposed by historians from a few famous schools.
“Can we complain of not seeing architects emerge from a generation of men
raised as day laborers?” he asks.119 Yet, Germany was still a model of sci-
entific and intellectual rigor. Upon his return to France, in 1881, Seignobos
penned an article for the Revue internationale de l’enseignement in which
he sings the praises of history teaching in Germany: “We must not forget
the services it has rendered in the past. It has cleansed history of rhetoric,
and taught us to resort to original documents. France would do well to
follow this example. All things considered, we have a great deal to envy in
Germany”.120
In that same year Seignobos earned his doctorate, with a thesis on the
post-1360 feudal regime in Burgundy. Following a brief stint (1879–1882)
as a professor at the University of Dijon, Seignobos joined the teaching staff
at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he taught historical method and modern
54 The Idea of Scientific History
and contemporary history. Most of his writings are devoted to the history
of France. Like Langlois, he contributed to the Histoire de France contem-
poraine, a project spearheaded by Ernest Lavisse, for which he published
three volumes: La Révolution de 1848, Le Second Empire (1848–1859);
Le Déclin de l’Empire et l’établissement de la Troisième République (1859–
1875); and L’Évolution de la Troisième République (1875–1914). In each
of these volumes, Seignobos presents a narrative history tracking in detail a
wide variety of historical events and developments.
To the end of his life, Charles Seignobos veered little in his approach to
history. He remained firmly attached to the particular and the political, as
evidenced in one of his last books, Histoire sincère de la nation française
(1933)—his “honest history” of France—and this despite the steady evolu-
tion of the historical discipline under the influence of the Durkheim school
and the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale. In the introduction to that
book, he wrote: “One might judge that I have dwelt too long on politics;
the fact is, I am convinced that political authority and political accidents,
invasions, wars, revolutions, changes of sovereign, have at all times exerted
a decisive influence on the development of the French people”.121 And he
adds, still more explicitly, that the history of France is really a tale of hap-
penstance: “The borders of France took shape only slowly, through a series
of accidents”.122 How can a discipline that focuses on events and accidents
consider itself a science? That was the thorny problem Seignobos attempted
to resolve in the course of his work.

The Cult of the Document

According to many historians opposed to the philosophy of history and
to metaphysics, scientific history had only one route open to it: it would
have to subject itself to the document, asserting nothing without an in-depth
knowledge of primary sources. This idea was already widespread at the end
of the 19th century. Fustel de Coulanges was one of those who strongly
defended this methodological principle. The first thing he asked his students
was, “do you have any documents?” This simple question illustrates clearly
the degree to which Fustel saw history as dependent on documents. For
Camille Jullian, the document was not only a means but also an end: “the
study of documents is the beginning and the end of true science”.123 For
yet other historians, the document was the perfect substitute for the direct
experimentation that was impossible in historical studies. Texts, insisted the
Belgian historian Charles De Smedt, “are for the historian what observa-
tions and experiments are for the natural sciences”.124 Many more examples
could be cited from the legions of historians who believed that scientific
rigor in history depends on the document. In their assertion that history
is made with documents—“no documents, no history”125—Langlois and
Seignobos were thus stating nothing new: they were merely reiterating a
commonly cited methodological mantra.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 55
The historian must first seek out and compile the documents necessary to
his investigation. This basic operation may be called heuristic. The historian
must then analyze the documents, decipher them, compare them and, above
all, verify their validity. The historian must be skeptical in his approach to
the document, and as Fustel de Coulanges maintained he must “doubt” in
the full Cartesian sense of that term: “All that has not been proven must be
temporarily regarded as doubtful; no proposition is to be affirmed unless
reasons can be adduced in favor of its truth”.126 In order to decipher docu-
ments, sound philological knowledge is essential so as to place each word,
each sentence in its particular context.
In his very earliest writings, Charles Seignobos was already deeply con-
vinced of the great intellectual importance of the document: “The only way
to historical knowledge is through the document. Documents are the sole
stuff of historical knowledge”.127 We can detect here a serious methodologi-
cal warning. In the absence of documents, the historian, rather than specu-
late on the progress of human societies or try to revive the philosophy of
history, is doomed to keep his silence, at the risk of leaving in limbo certain
eras or historical phenomena.
This stance amounts to strict empiricism. In science, the facts can be
approached in two ways: either directly, by observing them while they are
happening, or indirectly, by studying the traces they leave behind. In con-
trast to most of the natural sciences, history yields indirect knowledge. And
it is for this reason, as Seignobos sees it, that historical knowledge is imper-
fect, and that history “ranks at the bottom of the scale of sciences”.128 In
the sciences that are based on observation, it is the event itself that is the
point of departure; in history, before we arrive at facts, we must go through
an indispensable intermediary, and that is the document. Historical method,
then, is inevitably problematic: “Compared with other students the histo-
rian is in a very disagreeable situation. It is not merely that he cannot, as
the chemist does, observe his facts directly; it very rarely happens that the
documents which he is obliged to use represent precise observations. He
has at his disposal none of those systematic records of observations which,
in the established sciences, can and do replace direct observation”.129 The
historian, then, has little chance to be objective: “from the very nature of its
material history is necessarily a subjective science”.130

“History Is the Science of What Happens Only Once”

Despite these reservations, history is indeed a science in the full sense of that
word. But, Charles Seignobos is quick to point out, it falls in the category
of “descriptive sciences”, which are quite different from the general sci-
ences, such as physics, chemistry or biology, that seek to discover laws by
examining successive events of the same kind, with the goal not simply of
determining reality but of foreseeing what will happen under given condi-
tions. The descriptive sciences strive to understand particular realities, to
56 The Idea of Scientific History
determine how those realities are distributed in time and in space. “History
is here in the same situation as cosmography, geology, the science of ani-
mal species; it is not the abstract knowledge of general relations between
facts, it is a study which aims at explaining reality. Now, reality exists but
once. There has been but a single evolution of the world, of animal life, of
humanity. In each of these evolutions, the successive facts have not been the
product of abstract laws, but of the concurrence at each moment of sev-
eral circumstances of different nature. This concurrence, sometimes called
chance, has produced a series of accidents which have determined the par-
ticular course taken by evolution. Evolution can only be understood by the
study of these accidents; history is here on the same footing as geology or
paleontology”.131
And because each accident is unique, it does not lend itself to any com-
parison. “Almost never are we dealing with phenomena that are sufficiently
analogous to allow for comparison”, Seignobos insisted during a debate
with Durkheim at the Société française de philosophie.132 “The things of the
past, which are to be pictured in the imagination, were not wholly similar
to the things of the present, which we have seen. We have never seen a man
like Caesar or Clovis, and we have not experienced the same mental states
as they”.133 The objective of history, then, lies in coming to terms with the
singular event: “The human actions which form the subject matter of his-
tory differ from age to age and from country to country, just as men and
societies have differed from each other; and, indeed, it is the special aim of
history to study these differences. If men had always had the same form of
government or spoken the same language, there would be no occasion to
write the history of forms of government or the history of languages”.134
In the end, it is men who have changed the state of society, either as cre-
ators or initiators of a habit (artists, scholars, inventors, founders, apostles)
or as leaders of a movement, heads of state, parties, armies. It is events that
have brought about change in the habits or the condition of societies. Here
we have a serious warning, although it is not fully stated, against, to speak
like many of his intellectual opponents, “the methodological imperialism”
of Durkheim.135 And a few years later, in La Méthode historique appliquée
aux sciences sociales, Seignobos comes out openly on the offensive, hailing
the virtues of the individual as the driver of social change: “The action of the
individual is evident [. . .] the initiator leads society to change its ways”. In
fact, the individual “has a direct impact on certain economic usages, on the
organization of production, on commerce, even on the distribution of the
population, for example by creating or destroying a city”.136

The Case for Historical Method

In their 1898 treatise, Langlois and Seignobos confine themselves almost
exclusively to considerations of a methodological kind; theoretical and epis-
temological problems are virtually ignored or are passed over quickly. The
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 57
work is essentially a guide for the student eager to grasp the principles of
history treated scientifically.
Let us return to Charles Seignobos in 1901. With the publication of the
Introduction aux études historiques, the intellectual context has shifted.
With the rise of the Durkheimian school, constituted around the Année soci-
ologique, Seignobos has serious grounds to think about the role of history in
the family of the social sciences. In this context, his new book, La Méthode
historique appliquée aux sciences sociales sets out to prove that the social
sciences are dependent on historical method. For, Seignobos maintains, all
the studies of social facts are based on written documents.
The structure of the work is organized essentially into two broad sec-
tions: the first summarizes the main ideas and methodological guidelines of
the Introduction; the second (and in fact the original) section discusses the
relationship of history with the social sciences.
The first step is to define the terms “history” and “social sciences”.
History, as Seignobos tells us, “is the science of past human events”. More
precisely, “history is everything that we can no longer observe directly
because it has ceased to exist”.137 For their part, the social sciences “study
social facts, i.e. those that are produced in society: human habits of all kinds,
intellectual phenomena, political or economic institutions”.138
Seignobos considers that the social sciences embrace three specific
branches: 1, statistical sciences, including demography; 2, the sciences of
economic life; and 3, the history of doctrines and of economic experiments.
He is careful not to name sociology: he merely states, with ill-disguised con-
tempt, that sociology is “a word invented by philosophers”.139 Sociology is
pushed further to the sidelines when Seignobos says that the social sciences
“have only one characteristic in common, and that is to study phenomena
that correspond to the material interests of mankind”.140 He thus rejects the
influence of ideas, which constitute one of the core subjects of sociology.
Charles Seignobos seeks to prove that historical method is “indispensable”
to the social sciences as a whole. There are, he says, two main reasons for
this: “1. Every social science, whether it be demographics or economics, has
to base itself on the direct observation of phenomena. Yet in practice, the
observation of phenomena is always limited to a very narrow field. To arrive
at a broader understanding, we must always resort to the indirect procedure,
the document. Now the document can only be studied by using the historical
method [. . .] the historical method, then, is essential for making proper use
even of contemporary documents. 2. Every social science applies itself to phe-
nomena that do not remain constant; to understand them we must know their
evolution [. . .] This need to know their evolution is still greater when it comes
to economic life, where no organization is intelligible except through its past
history. We need, then, a historical study of previous social phenomena, and
that study is possible only through the use of a historical method”.141
This sums up very nicely the dependence of the social sciences on his-
tory. The social sciences, Seignobos tells us, are primarily sciences of indirect
58 The Idea of Scientific History
observation. For that reason, they must follow the procedures of the his-
torical method. Not only is history a guide to all the social sciences, but
it is, in a sense, the preeminent science of social facts. In making this case,
Seignobos is responding directly to the methodological imperialism of the
newly minted Durkheimian sociology. Yet Seignobos rarely uses the term
“sociology”, which, as Fustel de Coulanges insisted is just a “word” and not
a properly constituted science.
This being the case, which science should be tasked with studying the
evolution of human societies? Seignobos recognizes the legitimacy of social
history, although he views it as merely one of the many branches of gen-
eral history. Nevertheless, throughout this work, it is social history that
commands most of his attention. Seignobos gives a very broad defini-
tion: social history, he says, is the study of material facts. To this must be
added a strict constraint: “for a phenomenon to be social, it must be the
act, or the condition, or the material dependence of a man or a group of
men”.142 A “social” fact is merely a result of individual phenomena: “every
social phenomenon contains an individual mental element needed to give
it its own character”.143 “Consequently, in order to describe historical or
social phenomena we must understand their cause”.144 This methodologi-
cal fine point quickly becomes a declaration of war against Durkheim’s
theory. “Experience allows us to know only the individual consciousness.
The collective consciousness, then, is either a mere word game, for [. . .]
the consciousness of belonging to a collectivity is not collective conscious-
ness; or else, if it is attributed to a ‘mental individuality of a new kind’,
taking Durkheim’s expression, neither that individuality nor that spe-
cial consciousness—inaccessible to all observation—can be anything but
hypotheses, subjective if not metaphysical [. . .] The state of the individual
consciousness is all we can know”.145
The notion of collective consciousness, then, is purely fanciful in the eyes
of Charles Seignobos. During a debate at the French Philosophy Society,
Seignobos challenged Durkheim thus: “I would really like to know where is
this place where society thinks consciously?”146 Put in this candid manner,
the question offers a good illustration of the bugbear that always lurks in the
historian’s mind—the fear that history will be confused with metaphysics.
Langlois and Seignobos endowed the historical method with rules. For
a long time, the Introduction was considered the founding work of what
has been (erroneously) called “historical positivism”. However, the ascetic
aspect of the method championed in their work quickly aroused opposition.
From the turn of the century, attacks on the thinking of Langlois and
Seignobos became steadily more frequent. Many have seen in their approach
a kind of intellectual sclerosis. The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne was
one of the first to denounce it. Writing of Langlois and Seignobos in 1898,
he declared: “A great many [historians] will insist passionately that what
they do is a science. Their vehemence has always struck me as incompre-
hensible. The real question is not to find a name for what they do, but to
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 59
147
decide whether what they do is worth doing”. In 1913, in an article in
the famous Revue des deux mondes, the historian Gabriel Hanotaux dis-
missed the document method abruptly: “the abuse of the document smacks
of laziness”.148 Charles Péguy employed his customary irony to turn on its
head the aphorism of Langlois and Seignobos: “History is also made against
documents”.149 Even the psychologist Théodule Ribot joined the debate,
recalling in an article that “in history, objective observation is not possible.
The knowledge to be gleaned from written or other documents has its place,
but those documents are only roughly or approximately true, and they can
be challenged”.150 And lastly, we may imagine that Paul Valéry was think-
ing of Langlois and Seignobos when he wrote in the 1930s: “Great events
are perhaps great only for small minds. For more attentive minds, it is the
unperceived and continual events that count”.151
In the end, we may say that the work of Langlois and Seignobos demon-
strates the many difficulties inherent in the meeting of history and the social
sciences.

Between the Hero and the Masses

The scientific historiography of the late 19th century appears to us as a vast
field of immense diversity. If there was unanimous agreement on the need to
construct a science of history, the means employed to that end differed fun-
damentally. Authors, ideas and methodological concepts sometimes seemed
to be separated by an unbridgeable gulf. And yet, in all that diversity of
views we can make out a degree of consensus.
Romanticism is often seen as the arch enemy of scientific historians. Yet,
we must ask, is the divide between romantic history and scientific history
really as deep as the scientific historians of the time would lead us to believe?
Jean Walch argues that the essential rupture in French historiography was
not between romanticism and historical positivism but between traditional
historiography of the pre-Revolution era and romantic historiography.152
In his Teoria e Storia della Storiografia, dealing with the “theory and
history of historiography”, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce main-
tained that it was romanticism that had abolished the “historical dualism”
according to which reality contained facts that were positive and facts that
were negative, those that were “elite” and those that were “outcasts”, while
positivism insisted that all facts are facts and all have an equal right to be
entered in history.153 But then, later on, he asserts curiously that positiv-
ism “rejected individualistic atomism and spoke of masses, races, societies,
technique, economy, science, social tendencies; of everything, in fact, except
the arbitrary”.154 On this point we must cavil—positivism does not reject
“individualistic atomism”, and the work of Langlois and Seignobos is elo-
quent testimony to that fact.
On the other hand, it is difficult to agree with Croce that “individu-
alistic atomism” is the hallmark of romanticism. Indeed, romanticism
60 The Idea of Scientific History
too was interested in races, peoples, institutions and society. Michelet
and Thierry talked of nothing else. Pierre Moreau showed that, in the
aftermath of the French Revolution, romantic historiography had almost
completely dissociated itself from the individual. That shift, according
to Moreau, could only be explained by the social climate that prevailed
in the aftermath of the revolutionary upheavals: “The achievements of
leaders or great men were less apparent than the collective doings, the
work of the crowd, the mobilized masses. Until then, the protagonists of
history had been sovereigns and captains, front-stage actors in the drama.
Henceforth, history would feel more the presence of the great nameless
player”.155 In a similar vein, Durkheim adds: “For a century now, his-
torians have been highlighting the action of collective and anonymous
forces that lead the people on because they are the work of the people,
because they emanate not from this or that individual but from society as
a whole”.156 Yet, this does not mean that all historians from the beginning
of the 19th century were suddenly fascinated by the panoply of social
manifestations and their impacts.
In the history of ideas, abrupt discontinuities are rare. Changes in men-
tality can be observed only from some distance. In the wake of the French
Revolution, many historians remained closely attached to the event and the
great man. By contrast, from the middle of the 19th century, specialists in
the nascent social sciences began to see the need to refer to historical facts,
while contrasting their approach with that of historians.
On this point, the case of Alexis de Tocqueville is instructive. The approach
proposed in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution is explicitly opposed to the
historical practice of his time. Tocqueville begins his work with this avowal:
“It is not my purpose here to write a history of the French Revolution; that
has already been done, and so ably that it would be folly on my part to
think of covering the ground again. In this book I shall study, rather, the
background and nature of the revolution”.157 The frequently reconstituted
“history” to which Tocqueville refers is obviously that of events and indi-
viduals. What he proposes, by contrast, is a theory of the revolutionary phe-
nomenon: “True, we imagine we know all about the French social order of
the period, for the good reason that its surface glitter holds our gaze and we
are familiar not only with the life stories of its outstanding figures but also
with the brilliant critical studies now available, with the works of the great
writers who adorned that age. But we have only a vague, often quite wrong
conception of the manner in which public business was transacted and insti-
tutions functioned, of the exact relations between the various classes in the
social hierarchy, of the situation and sentiments of that section of the popu-
lation which as yet could neither make itself heard nor seen; and by the same
token, of the ideas and mores basic to the social structure of 18th-century
France”.158 Here, Tocqueville is challenging the explanatory power of nar-
ration. And he clearly understands how to distance himself from the “great
writers” (by which he merely means the historians of his time) in order to
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 61
159
develop, as Raymond Boudon has noted, a theory of social change. Facts,
descriptions, all those are but of secondary interest: “I shall of course cite
the facts”, Tocqueville writes to a friend, “and I will follow their course,
but it will not be my main concern to recount them”.160 The facts serve as a
point of orientation, nothing more. The individual must leave the forestage
to the “classes”, Tocqueville insists in a language strangely reminiscent of
Marx: “One can of course counter with individuals, but I am talking about
classes: they alone should concern the historian”.161 On the other hand,
Tocqueville is quick to condemn the philosophical systems that claim to
interpret the meaning of social evolution: “For my part, I detest these abso-
lute systems that try to show all the events of history as dependent on grand
first causes, linking them in a fateful chain, and in effect removing men from
the history from mankind. I find them narrow in their pretended scope, and
false in their air of mathematical truth”.162 We can well imagine that this
attack was aimed at Auguste Comte.
Although in most of his works, Tocqueville makes little reference to his-
torians of his time, it is interesting to note that in the second volume of
Democracy in America he distinguishes two types of historians, without
naming any in particular. There are first, he says, those who were writing in
“aristocratic ages” and who reduced history to specific events; then, there
are those who live in “democratic ages” and who “set great store by general
causes”. Tocqueville refuses to side with either of these extreme interpreta-
tions. “For my part, I am sure that at all times one portion of the events
of this world must be attributed to very general facts, and another to very
particular influences. These two causes are always intermingled: it is only
the proportion of the mix that varies”.163
As we have seen, the interpretation of causes lay at the origin of a great
many debates within the discipline of historical science. Two broad and con-
trasting methodological tendencies can be identified: one places emphasis
on the event and the accident, while the other interprets human evolution
in light of an implacable need. The historian Gabriel Hanotaux highlighted
this dichotomy: “Human history is geography and economics, but it is also
psychology: the psychology of individuals, the psychology of crowds, and
we now know how much at odds these two psychologies are within their
very unity”.164
Was the 19th century, then, the “century of history”? It was, but it was
also the century of historical method. The last two decades were particu-
larly rife with methodological debates and discussions. In a letter of 1941,
Charles Seignobos complained to Ferdinand Lot: “I have the impression that
for perhaps a quarter of a century thinking about historical method, which
was very active in the 1880s and 1890s, has reached a dead end. I have read
nothing new, nothing but snatches of philosophy of history, which is to say,
metaphysics”.165 At the turn of the 20th century, Charles-Victor Langlois
evidenced a nostalgia similar to that of his former collaborator, when he
stated bluntly that “whatever happens from now on, the 19th century will
62 The Idea of Scientific History
remain the high point of historical studies, the time when methods were
definitively constituted and when humanity learned and understood the
most about its past”.166
Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 20th century, we were to learn even
more about the past, thanks to the development of the social sciences and
the introduction of new methodological approaches.

Notes
1 Charles-Victor Langlois, “Les Études historiques au XIXe siècle”, Revue bleue
(14, 1900), pp. 225–236; Les études historiques (Paris: Larousse, 1915).
2 See François Hartog, Le XIXe siècle. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1988); François Héran, “L’Institution démotivée. De
Fustel de Coulanges à Durkheim et au-delà”, Revue française de sociologie (28,
1987), pp. 67–98; “De La Cité antique à la sociologie des institutions”, Revue
de Synthèse (3–4, 1989), pp. 363–390.
3 Paul Guiraud, Fustel de Coulanges (Paris: Hachette, 1896), pp. 145–169.
4 Jules Michelet, Histoire de France, 1 (Paris: Librairie internationale, 1871),
pp. vii–viii.
5 Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, 3
(Paris: Hachette, 1905), pp. 32–33.
6 Fustel de Coulanges, “Leçons inédites”, Revue de synthèse historique (1, 1900),
p. 243.
7 François Hartog, Le XIXe siècle. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges (Paris: Presses uni-
versitaires de France, 1988), p. 14.
8 Fustel de Coulanges, “Une Leçon d’ouverture et quelques fragments inédits”,
Revue de synthèse historique (2, 1901), p. 262.
9 Charles-Olivier Carbonell, Histoire et historiens. Une mutation idéologique
(Toulouse: Prerres de l’Institut d’études politiques, 1979), p. 320.
10 Gabriel Monod, “M. Fustel de Coulanges”, Revue historique (41, 1889), p. 277.
11 Camille Jullian, “Fustel de Coulanges”, Revue des Deux Mondes (15 mars
1930), p. 246.
12 Georges Pellissier, “Fustel de Coulanges”, Revue bleue (7, 1897), pp. 815–817.
13 Paul Guiraud, “La Méthode historique de Fustel de Coulanges”, Revue des
Deux Mondes (84, 1896), 73–111.
14 Fustel de Coulanges, “De l’analyse des textes historiques”, Revue des questions
historiques (41, 1887), p. 5.
15 Ibid., p. 8.
16 Ibid., pp. 34–35.
17 Fustel de Coulanges quoted in François Hartog, Le XIXe siècle. Le cas Fustel de
Coulanges (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1988), pp. 153–158.
18 J.-M. Tourneur-Aumont, Fustel de Coulanges 1830–1889 (Paris: Boivin, 1931),
p. 170.
19 Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique (Paris: Flammarion, 1984), p. 2.
20 Ibid., p. 2.
21 Fustel de Coulanges, Questions historiques (Paris: Hachette, 1893), p. 406.
22 Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, p. 163.
23 Ibid., p. 152.
24 Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, 3,
p. 168.
25 Ibid., p. 303.
26 Fustel de Coulanges, Questions historiques, p. 407.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 63
27 Fustel de Coulanges, “Une leçon d’ouverture et quelques fragments inédits”,
p. 256.
28 Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, 4,
p. 172.
29 Fustel de Coulanges, “Une leçon d’ouverture et quelques fragments inédits”,
p. 260.
30 Fustel de Coulanges, Questions historiques, p. 87.
31 Fustel de Coulanges, “Réponse à l’article de M. Paul Viollet”, Revue critique
d’histoire et de littérature (22, 1886), p. 261.
32 See François Héran, “L’institution démotivée. De Fustel de Coulanges à Dur-
kheim et au-delà”, pp. 67–98; “De La Cité antique à la sociologie des institu-
tions”, pp. 363–390.
33 Fustel de Coulanges, “Une leçon d’ouverture et quelques fragments inédits”,
p. 262.
34 Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, 3,
p. 60.
35 Camille Jullian, “Fustel de Coulanges”, Revue des Deux Mondes (March 1930),
p. 252.
36 Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, p. 15.
37 Ibid., p. 4.
38 Ibid., p. 41.
39 Ibid., p. 151.
40 Ibid., p. 456.
41 Ibid., p. 461.
42 Ibid., p. 464.
43 Henri Berr, Revue de synthèse historique (2, 1901), p. 242.
44 François Héran, “De La Cité antique à la sociologie des institutions”,
pp. 363–390.
45 Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France,
pp. 4, iv.
46 Émile Durkheim, “Préface”, L’Année sociologique, 1896–1897 (2, 1898), p. iii.
47 Georges Lefebvre, Naissance l’historiographie moderne (Paris: Flammarion,
1971), p. 27.
48 J.-M. Tourneur-Aumont, Fustel de Coulanges 1830–1889, p. 56.
49 Gabriel Hanotaux, “Fustel de Coulanges et le temps present”, Revue des Deux
Mondes (September 1923), p. 54.
50 François Hartog, “Préface”. In La Cité antique (Paris: Flammarion, 1984),
p. viii.
51 Charles Morel, L’État et la religion dans l’Antiquité. Cours examen du livre
de M. Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique (Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1866),
pp. 10–14.
52 Gabriel Monod, “Bulletin historique”, Revue historique (1896), p. 92.
53 Revue philosophique (4, 1882), p. 445.
54 Louis Bourdeau, Théorie des sciences, 1 (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1882),
pp. vii–viii.
55 Ibid., pp. vii–viii.
56 Ibid., p. ix.
57 Ibid., pp. xvii–xviii.
58 Ibid., p. 21.
59 Louis Bourdeau, L’Histoire et les historiens. Essai sur l’histoire considérée
comme science positive (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1888), p. 1.
60 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
61 Ibid., p. 10.
62 Ibid., pp. 11–12.
64 The Idea of Scientific History
63 Ibid., p. 288.
64 Ibid., p. 13.
65 Ibid., p. 14.
66 Ibid., p. 16.
67 Ibid., p. 23.
68 Ibid., p. 22.
69 Ibid., p. 26.
70 Ibid., p. 32.
71 Ibid., p. 37.
72 Ibid., pp. 59–66.
73 Ibid., pp. 74–75.
74 Ibid., pp. 126–127.
75 Ibid., p. 289.
76 Ibid., p. 290.
77 Ibid., pp. 292–296.
78 Ibid., pp. 309–310.
79 Ibid., pp. 320–324.
80 Ibid., p. 411.
81 Ibid., p. 397.
82 Ibid., pp. 431–432.
83 Charles Seignobos, Études de politique et d’histoire (Paris: Presses universita-
ires de France, 1932), p. 44.
84 Louis Bourdeau, Histoire de l’alimentation (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1894), p. 5; see
Le problème de la vie, essai de sociologie générale (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1901); Le
problème de la mort, ses solutions imaginaires et la science positive (Paris: Félix
Alcan, 1904).
85 See Peter Schöttler, “Fernand Braudel, prisionnier en Allemangne: face à la
longue durée et au temps présent”, Socialgeschichte (10, 2013), p. 21.
86 Henri Berr, L’histoire traditionnelle et la synthèse historique (Paris: Félix Alcan,
1921), p. 118.
87 Paul Lacombe, De l’histoire considérée comme science (Paris: Vrin, 1898),
p. xi.
88 Paul Lacombe, “La Méthode en histoire. Essai d’application à la littérature”,
Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (3,1895), p. 422.
89 Paul Lacombe De l’histoire considérée comme science (Paris: Félix Alcan,
1930), p. 2.
90 Paul Lacombe, “La Science de l’histoire d’après M. Xénopol”, Revue de syn-
thèse historique (1, 1900), p. 51.
91 Paul Lacombe quoted in Daniel Essertier, Philosophes et savants du XIXe siècle.
Extraits et notices (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1930), p. 286.
92 Paul Lacombe, Introduction à l’histoire littéraire (Paris: Hachette, 1898),
p. 354.
93 Paul Lacombe, De l’histoire considérée comme science, p. 4.
94 Ibid., p. 45.
95 Ibid., pp. 248–249.
96 Ibid., p. 5.
97 Ibid., p. 131.
98 Ibid., p. 5.
99 Ibid., p. 34.
100 Paul Lacombe, L’Homme et la guerre (Paris: Bellais, 1900), pp. 408–409.
101 Paul Lacombe, Introcution à l’histoire littéraire (Paris: Hachette, 1898),
pp. 24–26.
102 Paul Lacombe, De l’histoire considérée comme science, p. 10.
 Contrasting Approaches to Scientific History 65
103 Ibid., pp. 26–27.
104 Paul Lacombe, La Famille dans la société romaine (Paris: Vigot, 1889), p. 425.
105 Paul Lacombe, De l’histoire considérée comme science, p. 35.
106 Ibid., p. 45.
107 Ibid., p. 246.
108 Ibid., p. 261.
109 Ibid., p. 263.
110 Ibid., p. 281.
111 Ibid., pp. 291–292.
112 Ibid., p. viii.
113 Paul Lacombe, L’Appropriation du sol. Essai sur le passage de la propriété col-
lective (Paris: Armand Colin, 1912), p. v.
114 Paul Lacombe, De l’histoire considérée comme science, p. 234.
115 See Antoine Prost, Douze leçons sur l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1996),
pp. 7–11, 13–32.
116 Robert Fawtier, “Charles-Victor Langlois”, English Historical Review (45,
1930), pp. 85–91.
117 William R. Keylor, Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French
Historical Profession (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Pim den
Boer, History as a Profession: The Study of History in France, 1818–1914
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
118 On the influence of Germany on French historians, see: Claude Digeon, La
Crise allemande de la pensée française (1870–1914) (Paris: Presses universita-
ires de France, 1959); Isabel Noronha-DiVianna, Writing History in the Third
Republic (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).
119 Charles Seignobos, “L’Enseignement de l’histoire dans les universités alle-
mandes”, Revue internationale de l’enseignement (1, 1881), p. 589.
120 Ibid., p. 600.
121 Charles Seignobos, Histoire sincère de la nation française (Paris: Presses univer-
sitaires de France, 1969), p. 9.
122 Ibid., p. 15.
123 Camille Jullian, Extraits des historiens français du XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette,
1896), p. cxxvii.
124 Charles De Smedt, Principes de la critique historique (Liège: Librairie de la
Société bibliographique belge, 1883), p. 41.
125 Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of
History, trans. G. G. Berry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1926), p. 17.
126 Ibid., pp. 156–157.
127 Charles Seignobos, Études de politique et d’histoire (Paris: Presses universita-
ires, 1932), p. 5.
128 Presses universitaires de Francebid., p. 31.
129 Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of
History, p. 67.
130 Ibid., p. 217.
131 Ibid., pp. 245–246.
132 Charles Seignobos, “Débat sur l’explication en histoire et en sociologie”, Bul-
letin de la société française de philosophie (8, 1908), p. 206.
133 Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of
History, p. 220.
134 Ibid., p. 225.
135 See Philippe Besnard, “L’impérialisme sociologique face à l’histoire”. In His-
toriens et sociologues aujourd’hui, journées d’études annuelles de la société
française de sociologie (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1984), pp. 27–35.
66 The Idea of Scientific History
136 Charles Seignobos, La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales
(Paris: Félix Alcan, 1901), p. 299.
137 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
138 Ibid., p. 6.
139 Ibid., p. 7.
140 Ibid., p. 13.
141 Ibid., p. 14.
142 Ibid., p. 214.
143 Charles Seignobos, Études de politique et d’histoire (Paris: Presses universita-
ires de France, 1932), p. 16.
144 Charles Seignobos, La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales,
p. 216.
145 Ibid., p. 17.
146 Ibid., p. 238.
147 Henri Pirenne quoted. In Joseph Hours, Valeurs de l’histoire (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1960), p. 77.
148 Gabriel Hanotaux, “De l’histoire et des historiens”, Revue des Deux Mondes
(September 1913), p. 317.
149 Charles Péguy, Œuvres en prose, 3, 1909–1914 (Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle
Revue, 1927), p. 242.
150 Théodule Ribot, “La Conception finaliste de l’histoire”, Revue philosophique
(83, 1917), p. 212.
151 Paul Valéry, Regards sur le monde actuel et autres essais (Paris: Gallimard,
1945), p. 63.
152 Jean Walch, “Romantisme et positivisme. Une rupture épistémologique dans
l’historiographie”, Romantisme (19, 1978), pp. 160–172.
153 Benedetto Croce, Théorie et histoire de l’historiographie (Genève: Droz, 1968),
p. 191.
154 Ibid., p. 192.
155 Pierre Moreau, L’Histoire en France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1935), p. 30.
156 Émile Durkheim, L’Éducation morale (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1963), p. 234.
157 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Régime and the French Revolution, trans. Stu-
art Gilbert (New York: Doubleday Company, 1955), p. vii.
158 Ibid., pp. vii–viii.
159 Raymond Boudon, La Place du désordre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1984), p. 21; Tocqueville for Today (Oxford: Bardwell, 2006).
160 Alexis de Tocqueville quoted in Georges Lefebvre, Réflexions sur l’histoire
(Paris: Maspero, 1978), p. 135.
161 Ibid., p. 136.
162 Alexis de Tocqueville, “Souvenirs”. In Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard,
1951), p. 84.
163 Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, 2 (Paris: Gallimard,
1961), pp. 121–123.
164 Gabriel Hanotaux, “De l’histoire et des historiens”. Revue des Deux Mondes,
sept. 1913), p. 321.
165 Last letter of Charles Seignobos to Ferdinand Lot, Revue historique (1953),
pp. 3–4.
166 Charles-Victor Langlois, “Les Études historiques au XIXe siècle”, p. 228.
Part II

Henri Berr and Historical

Synthesis
3 Henri Berr, the Theoretician
of Historical Knowledge

Both in his own writings and in the collaborative projects he organized,

Henri Berr (1863–1954), a philosopher and lycée teacher, played an impor-
tant role in the progress of historical science in France at the beginning of
the 20th century.
Yet, it was through philosophy that Henri Berr arrived at history. His phil-
osophical training, which he acquired in particular from Émile Boutroux,
explains his interest in the epistemological questions of his time and his
broad views on the future of humanity. History, which he considered “the
science of all sciences”, must embrace all past facts: particular facts as well
as general facts, ideas as well as material facts. Eager to expand the field
of history to an almost limitless degree, Berr enlisted the collaboration of
eminent intellectuals with whom he planned to explore those aspects of
the human past that traditional history had overlooked. Encouraged by the
recent emergence of new social sciences, in particular sociology, Berr aspired
to open up history and make it a more ecumenical discipline.
As much by his method as by the problems he chose to address, Berr
stands apart from the historians of his time. He envisioned history from a
dual point of view, one that was both philosophical and positivist.1 As a phi-
losopher, he looked to history to show the meaning of human life, and his
writings often have moral connotations; as a scientist, he sought to establish
the facts and to identify relationships between them. This dialogue of phi-
losophy and science was in fact the cornerstone of all his thinking. And in
this regard, he had many models to imitate, most of them from 19th-century
France.2
Henri Berr’s style, which at times recalls the elegance of Sainte-Beuve, and
his constant concern for systematization, reminiscent of the finest efforts of
Taine and Cournot, make it difficult to classify him within the framework
of any particular discipline.
Henri Berr cannot be regarded, then, as a strict positivist. When he
appeared on the philosophical scene at the end of the 19th century, he pre-
sented himself, in the footsteps of Émile Boutroux and Henri Bergson, as
a critic of the scientific process. In his doctoral thesis on “the future of
philosophy”, L’Avenir de la philosophie, Berr insists on the possibility of
70 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
constructing a science of human evolution, one that will not be confined
to necessity but will be open to the accidental and to individual facts. At
first glance, there is nothing new in this attempt. But when Berr transposes
this philosophical principle to historical studies, his approach becomes more
original. Reacting against the scientific historiography of his time, Berr
maintains that the precondition for scientific history is not that the historian
should hide anonymously behind his documents but, on the contrary, that
he should reveal himself in broad daylight, that he interact with his subject
matter, and that he pose questions about the past in light of contemporary
concerns. In this way, Berr thought, history would emerge once and for all
from its metaphysical phase and would become, as Auguste Comte hoped, a
useful science that could lay the foundations for a new moral organization.
This general science of human evolution, which Henri Berr called “his-
torical synthesis”, had to be built with the materials of the social sciences.
What he proposed to the scientific community of the time was a multidis-
ciplinary vision, organized around the temporal dimension. And that com-
munity responded favorably, duly collaborating in the ambitious projects
that Berr was continually launching.
These remarks set the tone for the second part of this book, which pur-
sues two complementary intentions. On the one hand, we shall try to under-
stand the theoretical sources and the guiding themes in Henri Berr’s work,
and on the other hand, we shall stress his role as an organizer and instiga-
tor, by citing two of his most important collaborative projects, which he
founded and directed: the Revue de synthèse historique and the Évolution
de l’Humanité.

Constructing Synthesis
Henri Berr never evolved very far in his thinking: from his youthful writings
through to the works of his maturity, he consistently meditated on the need
for and the importance of a general science of human evolution. Yet it is
clear that, in order to understand his thinking correctly, we must examine
the works of his youth and show how his initial ideas were articulated.

Twin Influences: Fustel de Coulanges and Émile Boutroux

The influences that contributed to Berr’s thinking are too numerous to be dis-
cussed systematically. We shall confine ourselves here to the direct influences
exerted by two of his teachers: Fustel de Coulanges and Émile Boutroux.
Like many young intellectuals of his generation, including Camille
Jullian and Émile Durkheim, Henri Berr was heavily influenced by Fustel
de Coulanges.3 Under his tutelage, Berr was introduced to a new concept of
history, a new way of questioning the past. Fustel never speaks of events or
famous men. He discusses beliefs, manners, institutions, he seeks to under-
stand the human soul in its entirety: he asks how men of the past thought,
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 71
and he is also interested in the processes involved in the formation and the
disintegration of societies. Understood in this way, history goes well beyond
the narrow conception of certain historians: it becomes, as we have seen,
“the science of human societies”.
Fustel de Coulanges’s influence was not limited to methodological con-
siderations, although these were fundamental. He instructed the young
Henri Berr in the virtues of a concrete and useful historical science that
could illuminate human activity: “History”, he says in his lecture course,
“is not just a pastime”.4 Therein lies a valuable lesson in method, and Berr
himself admitted his intellectual debt to Fustel de Coulanges. In the first
issues of the Revue de synthèse historique, Berr enthusiastically reproduced
some previously unpublished writings of Fustel de Coulanges, with the tacit
goal of lending a certain legitimacy to the new journal. The author of La
Cité antique would no doubt have been “sympathetic” to the program of
our Revue, he wrote.5
The influence of Émile Boutroux (1945–1921) made itself felt in another
way, and it was even more profound. It was Boutroux who was Henri Berr’s
thesis advisor at the end of the 1890s. As a good historian of philosophy,
he suggested that Berr study the history of philosophical thought, analyze
a wide variety of doctrines and compare them with each other. Boutroux
insisted that a detour through the history of ideas was essential if a philoso-
pher were not to become prisoner to his own thinking.
But Boutroux was not only a historian of ideas, he was also an episte-
mologist and a respected theoretician. At the end of the 19th century he was
undoubtedly one of the best-known and most influential French philoso-
phers, on a par with Jules Lachelier and Charles Renouvier. The courses that
Boutroux gave had a large audience and his books were read and mulled
over by the French intelligentsia. This recognition was due in large part to
his thesis, De la contingence des lois de la nature (1874), which was widely
acclaimed. In that work, while calling into question certain principles of the
scientific process, Boutroux tried to highlight the initiative of the mind in the
constitution of science. Natural laws, he said, should not be seen as givens,
imposed from outside, but rather as creations of the mind. And he concluded
that necessity is nothing other than “the translation, into logical language as
abstract as possible, of the action that the ideal exerts on things”.6
In a similar vein, Boutroux argues that there is no opposition between the
individual and the general, between the contingent and the necessary. On the
contrary, they are complementary to each other. Thus, the individual partic-
ipates fully in the intellectual process and therefore cannot be excluded from
it. In Science et religion, Boutroux muses: “In science, the individual seeks
to systematize things from an impersonal point of view. How can science,
which is the work of the individual, prohibit him from trying to systematize
things as well from the viewpoint of the individual himself?”7
To assemble everything, to exclude nothing, this is the essential task of
philosophy as Boutroux sees it. In an article he published in the very first
72 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
issue of the Revue de synthèse historique, Boutroux takes the theoretical
principles of philosophical synthesis and transposes them into historical
synthesis. He suggests that history must be both analytical and synthetic.
The important facts, he writes, “are our guides for determining the minor
ones. For is it not a current maxim that, in order to understand persons or
events, we must place them in their own time and their own setting? And
does that not mean that we can know the detail only from the whole, and
that we can understand the whole only in the multitude of details? [. . .]
History cannot do without what is called (improperly) synthesis, together
with analysis”. Like any other science, he insists, history is first of all an
operation of the mind upon things: it is the “appropriation of historic doc-
uments by the human intelligence, just as the reduction of physical phe-
nomena into mathematical formulae is the appropriation of matter”.8 This
definition of the science of history is fully consistent with the one that Berr
sought to promote. Indeed, it is no accident that Boutroux contributed to
the very first issue of this journal (although his signature would not appear
there again). The presence of Boutroux, even if his article was brief and not
very original, gave a certain credibility to Berr’s project.

The Gestation of a Project

In committing himself to the path that Émile Boutroux had blazed, Henri
Berr considered that his cherished synthesis would have to be built around a
renewed historical science that associated the march of ideas with the mate-
rial conditions of existence. He would treat history not only as the science of
the past but also as the science of the present and of the future.
Of course, Henri Berr was not the first to champion a general science of
human evolution. At the turn of the century, this ambition sparked much
scholarly debate, and a considerable number of works were published on
the subject.
The intellectual atmosphere of the time encouraged Henri Berr to delve
into problems concerning the theory of history. One of his first writings
appeared in 1890 in an obscure journal, the Nouvelle revue, in which he
reflects upon “the science of history, statistical method, and the question of
great men”. At first glance, this article is but a simple recounting in which
our young author sets out to analyze five works of historical theory in an
impartial manner. The reality is quite different: Berr uses this pulpit to defend
his own ideas. The very first lines indicate the direction that the article will
take: “It would seem that a new science is about to be born, one that has
been long awaited, often promised, but always deferred; of all the sciences,
the last to appear but the first in importance, and one that builds upon most
of the others and surpasses them, for its subject matter lies in the most com-
plex of phenomena: those that constitute the evolution of humanity”.
This “new science” is doubly important: it allows man to clarify both
“the mystery of his origins and that of his future”. We can already appreciate
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 73
the immense scope that historical knowledge will have to embrace in Berr’s
thinking.
Like Émile Boutroux, Berr does not attempt to set the different currents
of thought against each other, but rather seeks to bring them together. He
never questions the importance and the interest of the works he analyzes;
he raises no objection to the often sterile efforts of his forerunners. He ana-
lyzes, he discusses, he notes objections, he rounds out the thinking of the
authors with numerous personal reflections, and he frequently stresses that
history as a discipline is a work in progress: “By declaring that such a sci-
ence will be born, we risk drawing smirks, both from those who thought
it constituted long ago and from those who deem the venture impossible.
However, we can safely deny that it already exists: surely it would not be
difficult to show that the philosophy of history has most often amounted to
nothing more than adventurous metaphysics, a systematization improvised
by minds preoccupied with final causes”.
One might be tempted to read in this passage the death certificate of
metaphysics and of the philosophy of history. But Henri Berr was in no
way condemning the metaphysical phase, which he saw as part of a process
of continuity. Human thought progresses, he insists, and tends ceaselessly
toward a higher level of perfection. There is no doubt that, on this point,
the young Berr was heavily influenced by Auguste Comte and the positiv-
ist school. Hence the inevitable question: has history entered the positivist
phase? “Did not the fanciful reconstructions of the past also herald a lasting
monument, just as alchemy or astrology helped pave the way for the sci-
ences that supplanted them? If we had to adopt the three phases of Auguste
Comte—and they do contain, as does any system, a parcel of truth—the
‘new science’ that Vico anticipated would finally arrive at the positivist
period. The first attempts had failed because, as soon as the idea that there
is order in history glimmered in people’s minds, they wanted to take the
pliable material of a little-known past and bend it to the speculations of
a rash philosophy”.9 Consequently, the “new science” would be achieved
only when philosophy was reconciled with scholarship.
But that is not all, and here we come to the core of Berr’s analysis: the
“new science” will have to be constructed from the most diverse inter-
pretations of historical developments, and will have to indicate the lim-
its of reductionist tenets. As to historical statistics, which Louis Bourdeau
claimed could “explain everything”, Berr remains skeptical: “Is it true”,
he asks, “that everything can be reduced to quantitative documents?” And
what are we to make of mental life: can it be explained quantitatively?
Under the pretext of discovering general laws, Berr complains, statistics
denies the role of the singular event and the great man: “To base all of his-
tory on statistics is to deny the exception, the genius”.10 On the contrary,
the “new science” cannot be limited to collecting heterogeneous facts. A
great many historians, Berr notes, view the stuff of history as a tapestry of
one-off events and deeds.
74 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
Between these two extreme and apparently irreconcilable positions, the
goal of historical science must be to identify “the principal agents of his-
tory”. The famous individual, the king, the sovereign, the politician—can
such be considered as the principal agents of historical change? In the face
of this key question, Berr adopts a stance that evokes perfectly that of the
philosophers of the 19th century, such as Cournot and Taine. He insists
on the reciprocal interaction between the individual and his setting: “The
king has only the power that his subjects grant him, and his will is effective
only if everyone shares it”. The famous individual, although his prestige
and his authority may depend on the masses, is not thereby stripped of
all autonomy: “Let us, for the sake of argument, eliminate Napoleon III
or Bismarck and have Gambetta or Frederick III live longer: do you think
nothing would be changed?”11 By all evidence, Berr replies, the answer is
no. The great movements that shape the destiny of peoples result both from
necessity and from individual initiative. Here we have an attempted expla-
nation of historical causality, as well as the outline of a theory of historical
knowledge. The famous individual can be explained in part by his setting,
but he stands out from it, he tends to surpass it, and his action sometimes
leads the masses to follow his will. In other words, the setting serves as a
condition to his work, but it is not the efficient cause; the individual’s role
is more important.12 “Wish as it might, the crowd cannot create an artist:
the artist, on the other hand, can sometimes emerge outside and in spite of
the setting. If all artists have something in common, this creative gift that
is their privilege and that sets them apart from other men, they also have a
character that distinguishes them among themselves”.13
What Henri Berr is proposing here is clearly an individualistic thesis. All
progress can be explained by “the qualities of an individual”: “The growth of
human powers can be attributed to certain minds, not providential but privi-
leged, which the general need can stimulate but which are indeed necessary
to satisfy a general need and which, almost always impatient of their setting,
move on ahead of their contemporaries”.14 In fact, “it is a deliberate process
of individualization that is the condition for a complete history”. What we
find are “acts, works, inventions, ideas that are like the eternal and glorious
imprint of individual variation”.15 Clearly, Berr is distancing himself from
the kind of scientific positivism that was in vogue at the time. Thus, he takes
strong exception to Bourdeau’s philosophy of history, where individual varia-
tions and initiatives are bound up in the workings of an implacable necessity.
How can we reconcile the defense of the philosophy of history, on one
hand, and this outright attack against it, on the other? It is around this para-
dox that Berr constructs his historical synthesis.

Striving for the Unity of Life and Science

In 1894, Henri Berr published his first work, Vie et science, to which he
added a subtitle describing it as an exchange of letters between “an old
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 75
Strasbourg philosopher and a Parisian student”. We must not be misled by
this curious tag: the book is not a collection of correspondence but rather a
philosophical novel with autobiographical overtones. Its structure is quite
unique—the hero, and in reality the only protagonist, is Henri Berr, lurk-
ing behind two fictitious figures engaging in a philosophical dialogue. The
student puts many questions, baring his soul to the philosopher; the phi-
losopher responds with a mix of wisdom and nostalgia. Through these per-
sonalities, Berr reveals his torment: he is worried about the fragmentation of
knowledge, about academic specialization. In fact, Berr often departs from
the tone of the novel to make it more of a manifesto—a manifesto for syn-
thesis. Without exaggerating the importance of this book, we may say that
Vie et science is to Berr what the Avenir de la science was to Ernest Renan:
a youthful essay, strident in tone, lively, lucid, often moving, in which he
discusses the role of science in contemporary societies.
This work of the young Henri Berr is a perfect reflection of the quandary
in which philosophical thinking found itself in France at the end of the 19th
century. Philosophy was suffering a severe identity crisis. Félix Ravaisson
had foreseen it as early as 1867 in his Rapport;16 at the turn of the century,
Émile Boutroux was alarmed at it.17 All came to the same conclusion: phi-
losophy was being marginalized by the emergence of a host of positive sci-
ences. Philosophy was no longer the master science, the total science that had
formerly been entrusted with the governance of all knowledge. As was read-
ily apparent in academic circles, the spirit of specialization had triumphed.
Ambitious philosophical syntheses were consigned to obsolescence. Like
many intellectuals of his day, Berr was profoundly disturbed by this situation.
If knowledge was in crisis, it was because man himself was in crisis. If
science had divorced itself from philosophy, it was because man was no
longer thinking globally. Or worse yet, he was “no longer thinking”. That is
the conclusion that Berr reached in this fine passage: “At the present time,
there are people who do not think at all; there are people who think only to
condemn thought; there are people who think outside science and there are
those who think against science. And lastly, there are people who practice
science without thinking. Science is not playing the role that it should; it is
being used for inventions rather than to demonstrate the value of principles
and truths. It does not illuminate the mind; it does not speak to the heart.
It does not triumph, it does not reign. And that is because, if you look at it
closely, it is analytic and not synthetic”.18
Science must restore its close links with philosophy. Without a philosoph-
ical foundation, science is incomplete: “Science, in expanding its empire,
has propagated the habit of admitting only the positive, of looking no fur-
ther than phenomena and their laws, of explaining or pretending to explain
everything by causes that are of the same order as the effects”.19
Scientific positivism, lamented Berr, had contributed greatly to the ruin-
ation of philosophy: “This entire century has suffered from a surfeit of
scientific analysis: knowledge, in its current form, produces in the mind a
76 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
feeling of being rent asunder; it harms, whereas it could heal [. . .] It is well
to be leery of positive syntheses that are false, inept and incomplete, and
which make things worse through the inevitable disappointments”.20
How was the unity of thought to be restored? Henri Berr answers this
question along the same lines as Auguste Comte: we must first erect a new
moral code and then rethink our institutions.
The crisis of thought could be laid to the crisis of moral values. Moral unity
among people had broken down, and chaos had set in. Was there a cure? This
question occupies Henri Berr in a little essay that asks, “can we restore the
moral unity of France?” It is no accident that this work appeared in 1901,
at a time when the public conscience was deeply troubled; the Dreyfus affair
had been tearing at the French soul for several years. Berr raises the alarm:
“Yes, this is a dangerous moment. As in the time when Fichte was striving,
through his inspiring addresses [Reden an die Deutsche Nation], to rally the
Germans to unity, it is the natural ambition of every observant and thought-
ful Frenchman to restore the unity of today’s France, now so shattered and
incoherent, and thus prepare the way for human unity”.21
Education was contributing to this malaise. At the secondary school [lycée]
level, as in the university, teaching was becoming ever more specialized; the
various branches of knowledge were straying in opposite directions, and
the disciplines were ignorant of each other. The humanities, in particular,
were hemmed in by the walls erected between disciplines. Looking back on
his years as a student, Henri Berr writes: “All this immense field of research
concerning man was in my eyes a dark and impenetrable jungle; philology
with its subdivisions, history with its auxiliary sciences, an endless variety
of subject matters, whether of centuries, of peoples, of languages, of facts or
of works—where were the relationships, what was the purpose of all that
study?”22 Berr is worried, tormented. Nevertheless, he allows himself an
optimistic thought: “The time for synthesis has come [. . .] the concern for
synthesis must penetrate analysis—that way, not only will everyone’s work
be more effective, not only will everyone collaborate more closely, but every
little detail of research will reflect this joy we derive from the view of the
whole”.23 This passage from Vie et science indeed summarizes Berr’s work.
The word “synthesis”, the key word, appears here for the first time. For the
moment, he is speaking only of general synthesis, in its philosophical sense;
it does not yet bear the “historical” epithet. In this youthful work, we search
in vain for a systematic definition of synthesis; Berr certainly promotes it in
many places, but he does not define it. In fact, Vie et science has no scientific
pretensions. The work is apparently intended as a collection of personal
reflections, but it reveals the embryo of Berr’s scientific design.

The History of Thought or the Quest for Unity

From 1894 to 1899, Henri Berr’s name is absent from philosophical and
literary journals. Nor did he write any books during this time. In fact, he
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 77
devoted those five years to writing his doctoral thesis. The idea of historical
synthesis was taking shape in his mind, and he arrived at the conclusion
that synthesis must be articulated around the historical time span. The title
of his main thesis reveals this: L’Avenir de la philosophie, esquisse d’une
synthèse des connaissances fondée sur l’histoire—it promises an “outline
of a history-based synthesis of knowledge”. And his secondary thesis (writ-
ten according to custom in Latin) deals, appropriately enough, with the
philosophical work of Gassendi (1592–1665), who, in Berr’s eyes, was one
of the first thinkers to have considered the possibility of a general science
of history.

Henri Berr, Student of Gassendi

Berr maintained a steady interest in the work of Gassendi. This enthusi-
asm for a thinker who was overshadowed in his own time by the Cartesian
school might at first raise some questions. Why should one study an obscure
philosopher from the 17th century? What interest could his ideas hold for
the late 19th century?
It was important, Henri Berr insisted, to demonstrate the importance
of Gassendi’s thinking in the history of ideas and especially to highlight its
current interest. For to a large extent, as we shall see, the questions that
concerned Gassendi at the beginning of the 17th century were the same ones
that haunted Berr at the end of 19th.
Among the many subjects in which Gassendi took an interest—philosophy,
astronomy, physics—Berr focused only on philosophy. But in fact, the phi-
losophy of Gassendi was constructed so broadly that it embraced virtually
all the sciences of his time. He was the protagonist of a universal science
which he called “Syntagma”. This key word already reveals the reasons
why Berr attempted to raise Gassendi to the ranks of great thinkers. “I have
no hesitation in asserting that the history of the 17th century will never be
completely understood until we have thoroughly investigated the works and
the thinking of Gassendi and have identified the influence of his writings, his
ideas and his example on his contemporaries and his successors”.24
Gassendi represented an abrupt departure from the accepted ideas of his
time: “For my part”, writes Berr, “I am convinced, and I become more con-
vinced every day, that Gassendi provides an excellent focal point for con-
sidering everything that in the 17th century was opposed to the dominant
principles”.25 The “principles” that Gassendi opposed were those of spe-
cialization. In the 17th century, a host of philosophical doctrines appeared
and jostled with each other. “Historians have long observed that religious
conflicts, the rebirth of ancient letters, the development of science, the
expansion both of the world and of thinking had the result of overwhelm-
ing minds under the weight of knowledge and confusing them through the
diversity of systems”.26 How could the systems be unified? How could dia-
logue be encouraged among the new branches of knowledge?
78 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
Gassendi was certain that unity was possible only through history; he had
“a broad premonition of historical studies”.27 What interested Gassendi, it
seems, was not the history of events and of great men, but the history of
the progress of knowledge and of the human mind: “History is assuredly
the light of life, for not only does it lift times past from their obscurity and
dispel the confusion but it also, through countless examples, instructs our
mind and enables it to understand, based on the past, what we must expect
for the future, what we must posit as the purpose of life, where this univer-
sal comedy is taking us, and why nothing will ever be new or surprising”.28
So reminiscent are these lines of the intellectual context of the late
19th century that they could well have been written by Berr. It is no exag-
geration to say that, as this passage shows, Gassendi was trying to discern
the “laws” of history, although he did not use that term. With Gassendi,
the field of history is open to new horizons: it is no longer confined to the
past, it now extends to the present and to the future. As we shall see, Berr’s
concept of history was no different.
Is Gassendi, then, the father of historical synthesis? There is a striking simi-
larity of views between Gassendi and Berr. Indeed, it has been quite rightly
said that Gassendi and Berr were “two strong spirits reaching out their hands
to each other across the centuries”.29 Their respective times were marked
by profound upheavals and intense social ferment. Gassendi was witness to
the Reformation, to doctrinal conflicts and to the expansion of the Western
world; Berr lived through the Franco-Prussian war, the Dreyfus affair and two
world wars. And yet, even though separated by three centuries, they both set
for themselves the dual objectives of establishing a principle for making sense
of the changes under way and of reorganizing the knowledge of their day.

The Progress of Philosophical Thought

and the Introduction of Synthesis
The history of ideas was a constant field of exploration for Berr. He looked to
it for the materials with which to develop his synthesis. His interest in the work
of Gassendi is a serious indication of this, and his doctoral thesis on the future
of philosophy is even more persuasive. That work is ambitious, to say the least,
in the problems it addresses. Berr seeks to show, through the history of thought
since the 16th century, that scientific deduction is at all times based on philo-
sophical foundations. Dismayed at the compartmentalization of knowledge,
Berr adopts a mission: to insert the philosophical spirit everywhere, even into
the domains claimed by the positive sciences as their preserve.
How is synthesis to be established? There is one principle that com-
mands Berr’s approach and the entire construct of his thesis: synthesis is
to be found not in material reality but in the being, the subject. In other
words, the subject is the principle of unity: it is the only certainty, the only
truth. According to Berr, the entire evolution of modern philosophy revolves
around this idea. It is legitimate, then, to believe that philosophy evolves,
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 79
that it is not an eternal re-beginning and that, despite appearances, systems
of thought are closely interrelated. “Philosophy progresses, that is the most
important fact”, he declares; “it progresses in the same way as science, with
which it has moreover been closely linked throughout its history”.30 More
precisely, science is the instrument of the progress of thought; it is a method
that seeks to resolve philosophical problems.
But all “truth” will be obtained through “positive knowledge”. According
to Henri Berr, positive knowledge embraces both psychological and scien-
tific knowledge.
Let us take psychological knowledge first. We are dealing here with psy-
chology not as Théodule Ribot conceived it, but as established by Maine de
Biran—i.e., introspective psychology. The subject of that psychology is the
self, the “I” [le moi]. The I, Berr tells us, is the point of departure for all
knowledge: “The philosopher who reflects upon the word I must, it seems,
develop in this way the inductive and fundamental knowledge that is depos-
ited and condensed in that syllable: therein is a reality and it sees itself as
such. Consciousness, reality, unity—that is what the word I implies. That
is what thinking discovers in it, if it considers it honestly”. But the word
becomes fully intelligible only when it is compared to external reality, the
“non-I”. It is by contrasting these two opposites that we appreciate their
respective singularity. “The essential I recognizes itself only in the adventi-
tious I [. . .] that must mean that the I knows itself only through the non-I,
that I and non-I are given simultaneously in the consciousness and are per-
ceived simultaneously in thought”.31
It is the task of psychology to establish a dialectical relationship between
the I and the non-I. “Psychology discovers in the consciousness the reality
of the I and the non-I: it defines the I as a sentient and consequently a unify-
ing unit; it poses the non-I without defining it. But the non-I is conceivable
only in relation to the I. Science is based on a necessary hypothesis, which it
proves little by little; it is an application, at first spontaneous, of the I to the
non-I, an extension of psychology”.32 Scientific knowledge relies, then, on
an abstract form of psychology: the object “can be known only if it to some
degree resembles the subject”. Science is nothing other than “a spontane-
ous application of psychology to the non-I”.33 In fact, there is in science an
“undeniable and inevitable anthropomorphism”. Berr admits the principle
that science can only be general, but he hastens to add this qualification,
which brings us back to the Cartesian cogito: “For the general to exist”,
he says, “there must be uniformities, resemblances; and resemblance is not
attached to things, it is attributed to them by the mind which recognizes the
similarities; it results from the manner in which the unity of the I is affected
by the object”.34 Scientific knowledge, then, is the joint work of things and
of thought. In fact, any science, from mathematics to history, expresses “the
essence of the I”. “The being that is, the being that is made, and the relation-
ships between the being that is and the being that is made—there you have
the triple object of synthetic research”.35
80 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
How should synthetic research be conducted? Berr’s conclusion on this
score is strikingly reminiscent of Gassendi. “Scientific research”, he declares,
cannot be pursued effectively except through history. “What I plan to focus
on is history in its proper sense, on mankind as it has evolved. Of all subjects
of study, none is of equal value: this history, in reality, is something incom-
plete through which the rest tends to complete itself; through this history,
speculation and activity are joined in science: speculation rules activity, and
the rule of activity reacts upon speculation”.36
Of course, if history is to be synthetic, it must be rethought: this means
that its methodological principles will have to be completely overhauled.
Scholarly history is futile, it serves only “to charm” and “to amuse”, while
the philosophy of history is a wild fantasy: “it has done violence to the past
by bending it to its concepts”.37
Navigating between these twin reefs, Henri Berr charts a course reminis-
cent of Paul Lacombe: history, he insists, must maintain close relations with
psychology. Or better yet, it must become a multiple psychology: ontologi-
cal psychology, social psychology, biographical psychology. The assemblage
of these psychologies constitutes the very object of historical synthesis.
The development of a general science of human evolution to which
Henri Berr aspired (influenced as he was by the Neo-Kantianism of the late
19th century38) inevitably called into question the legitimacy of sociology.
Following Auguste Comte, sociology had also sought to unify knowledge,
but Berr believed it had failed. And that, he says, is because its methodologi-
cal intentions are completely defective: it defines the social as an autono-
mous reality that dominates the individual. In Berr’s eyes, this determinism
is unacceptable. “The elements that constitute society are conscious, think-
ing beings, and they are increasingly conscious and thinking: they think of
themselves and they think of society, and they think of themselves more and
more as elements of society. The constraint that society exerts over them,
this they accept, they wish it; and then they make it gradually fade away;
they recognize that this constraint emanates from their unconscious will, that
it responds to the ultimate law of their being. In short, the individual, as a
thinking being, and society develop in parallel—or rather, reciprocally. The
progress of society allows the progress of the individual, and vice versa”. For
Berr, society, far from being a reality in its own right, is, on the contrary, the
“conscious” work of individuals. It results from individual thinking, which
is at once the cause and the condition of social life. “Society is the being in
which psychological thinking comes into flower: it is essentially plastic and it
molds and organizes itself to fit the progress of this thinking which, in reflec-
tion, reaches beyond the individual and the social being to the very substance
of being”.39 Can we detect in these assertions the opening salvos of a debate
with Durkheim? We can at least see the first hints of real divergences, and we
will find them again under other formulations in the years to follow.
We shall return to this point, but we must here and now pre-empt any
misunderstanding. Berr’s intention, in the assertions just quoted, is not to
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 81
show that sociology is a fantasy, but rather to define it, to specify its scope—
in short, to indicate the role that it should play in constituting historical
synthesis.
What is original about Berr’s thesis? To what extent does his thinking
about the evolution of philosophy serve to justify the development of a gen-
eral science of history?
This thesis must not be taken as a fully matured framework of thinking.
Too many questions are still vaguely phrased; the approach is too tortu-
ous. Much of the work is devoted to an overly exhaustive account of the
history of thought from Descartes to the end of the 19th century. Three
centuries of Western intellectual history are thus condensed in cursory fash-
ion. Hundreds of authors are quoted, and a host of doctrines and systems
are cited. How are we to interpret the intent of this dissertation? the jury
wondered. Émile Boutroux offered this critique: “M. Berr has read a great
deal; he has read too much, and as an inevitable consequence he has read
too many secondhand works. In philosophy one has to read the same text
a hundred times; reading too much prevents one from reading well”. Alfred
Espinas was even more severe: “I cannot really make out the dominant idea
of your sketch of the history of philosophy; it is a useful textbook of the
history of philosophy, but it is not an integral part of an original work”.40
These are perfectly legitimate objections. But, in defense of Henri Berr,
we must note that it is not in the field of philosophy or the philosophy of
history that his thesis claims to be original, but rather in the field of scien-
tific history that was then flourishing. How does the genesis of philosophy
serve his plan? Simply put, Berr is seeking to transpose into history the idea
of the unifying and rational subject that we find, in many different forms,
throughout the history of modern philosophical thought.41

Historical Synthesis and Sociology

The Avenir de la philosophie is essentially a program for arriving at synthesis.
That being the case, we can only marvel at its convolutions.
In the first years of the 20th century, Henri Berr devoted much of his
thinking to the rigorous and practical development of the idea of synthesis.
He modified his language: he no longer spoke of synthesis without adding
the qualifier “historical”. At the same time, sociology was gradually gain-
ing legitimacy on both the methodological and the institutional fronts. The
Durkheimians were sure of the intellectual importance of their discipline.
They not only defined it as the “corpus” of the social sciences, but they also
insisted that the object of their study was irreducible.
How did Henri Berr react to a discipline whose ultimate ambition it was
to govern human knowledge? He began by calling into question the very
basis of the methodological principle that treated society as an independent
reality, distinct from the individuals that comprise it. In the same vein, he
stressed the eclectic nature of sociological science. “There are too many
82 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
sociologies for sociology to be considered as constituted”, he writes.42 Its
methodology is haphazard and riddled with gaps, and this proves once
again that sociology has not yet achieved the status of a science. “It is unar-
guably a weakness of sociological studies that there are so many ‘introduc-
tions’ to sociology where the science is defined in various ways; there are so
many ‘general’, ‘pure’, ‘abstract’ sociologies, so many textbooks where the
facts are systematized in entirely different ways”.43 Émile Durkheim and his
collaborators were probably the unnamed targets of this attack.44
According to Henri Berr, Durkheim and his “group of good workers”
were inspired by a common concern to constitute sociology scientifically by
giving it methodological rules. Berr was nonetheless in disagreement with
the Durkheimians’ reading of history: they “tend to give history a purely
sociological interpretation”, he complained. “Whatever reality societ-
ies may represent, however legitimate ‘society’ may be as an abstraction,
and however important this factor may be in historical explanation, it is
unacceptable, in reaction against individualistic history, to pose a priori the
social being as an irreducible given, as the primordial source of all human
facts”. Berr refused to believe that the individual would bow in servile obe-
dience to the coercive force of collective life. He went even further: in some
stimulating lines (which, we might add, smack somewhat of the utilitarian
tradition), he maintains that any form of human association is the conscious
work of individuals. If there is such a thing as society, he says, it is because
individuals manifest the desire to live together. “It has not been proven, and
it is highly unlikely, that society was constituted from the outset: we must
not attribute to it a reality that predates and is superior to that of individu-
als—of what could that initial reality have consisted?” What is produced in
society is not, then, “produced exclusively by society”.45
The quarrel between Berr and the Durkheimian school relates essentially
to the origins of social life. It is true that Berr admits, with Durkheim, that
collective life is external to individuals and that it can exercise constraint,
but this externality and this constraint, he insists, exist only when society
is firmly constituted: in other words, at the time it is endowed with institu-
tions. “Society was not constituted all at once. We cannot say that before
there was any true social organization, men were hostile or closed to some-
thing that did not exist. It could only be the social instinct of individuals,
through a logical evolution, that gave birth to that social organization, and
then went on to develop it because of the benefits it offered”.46 Berr finds
it difficult to accept that there could be a collective consciousness distinct
from the subjects that constitute it. “If society is to act upon individuals,
individuals—as social beings—must first have created society. The effect
reacts upon the agent”. Following this dialectical process, the individual is
both cause and effect of social life. “What seems obvious is that society and
the individual, from the mental viewpoint, are at once in opposition, virtual
or real, and intimately related. Durkheim and his followers are wrong, then,
not to recognize this complex interplay of constant action and reaction, not
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 83
to distinguish, in their studies on the genesis of thought, what is individual—
in the sense of human or logical—from what is social; not to recognize that
the action of society is limited to affirming, freeing and developing rational
logic, which it could never create. It is the individual who creates it”.47
There would seem, then, to be considerable disagreement between
Henri Berr and Durkheim. Célestin Bouglé, who was an avid reader of the
Revue de synthèse historique, maintains that Berr’s comments concerning
Durkheim and the Année sociologique are “less severe than they appear at
first glance”.48 The fact remains, however, that we have here two method-
ological orientations that are diametrically opposed. In a context where vast
encyclopedic syntheses were being rendered obsolete by the specialization
of disciplines, Berr seemed doomed to failure. At the crossroads of “events-
based” history, the old philosophies of history and the budding sociology,
he would face great difficulty in having his ideas triumph at the institutional
level.49

The History Chair at the Collège de France:

Moving on From Failure
Although he was not a historian either by training or by profession, Henri
Berr worked ceaselessly to advance the science of history. This sometimes
placed him in awkward situations. Indeed, various historians greeted his
works with indifference, regarding them as pertaining to sociology or seeing
in them a return to the philosophy of history.
It might strike us as surprising, then, that Henri Berr applied for a posi-
tion to teach general history at the Collège de France in 1903, the very year
in which the exchanges between historians and sociologists reached a fever
pitch.50
Although he was not yet 40 when he submitted his candidacy, Henri Berr
already had a fairly full intellectual career behind him. As professor of rhet-
oric at the Lycée Henri IV, he had many publications to his credit: dozens
of articles and essays and three books. Most importantly, he had founded
the Revue de synthèse historique which, he proudly said, had already done
much to enrich “French science”. But Berr was not content to promote his
project: he used it at the same time to attack the philosophers, the histo-
rians and the sociologists. None of this improved his chances. In the eyes
of many historians, Berr’s historical synthesis had no place in the teaching
of general history. His approach was considered much too philosophical.
Among others who held that opinion was a prestigious candidate for the
same chair, the historian Gabriel Monod.51 Speaking on behalf of the his-
tory community, he remarked to Berr personally that there were “already
enough chairs of philosophy”. We can understand the sharpness of Berr’s
response: “M. Monod is in error when he writes me that there are enough
chairs of philosophy at the Collège de France. I could reply to him that
there are enough chairs of pure history, as well as of philosophy proper”.52
84 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
Monod’s opinion was no doubt shared by many others, and Berr’s can-
didacy was not accepted. Ironically, it was Monod, founder of the Revue
historique, who was awarded the chair. Monad had a clear advantage over
Berr on all counts. He enjoyed academic prestige, while Berr was a lycée
teacher. Moreover, the Revue historique had a large following among histo-
rians, something that was obviously not the case for the Revue de synthèse
historique, which was of interest primarily to sociologists and philosophers.
This setback did not deter Henri Berr from his belief in the virtues of
historical synthesis. In the years to come, he would defend his ideas with the
same fervor and would seek out platforms for promoting them. Thus, it was
that in 1912—at the very time when François Simiand was aspiring to the
chair in labor history53—he again applied for a second time to the Collège
de France, supported this time by Henri Bergson and Joseph Bédier.54 But
once again, the Collège the France showed itself unreceptive to synthesis.
Berr was considered an outsider by the French historians of his time.55 As
one author put it, “this was surely a victory for the conservative academ-
ics of the Collège de France, the guardians of the relationships between
disciplines”.56
Henri Berr’s eclecticism, it seems, made him a poor catch. And there were
many who doubted that Berr, whose philosophical training surely made him
suspect, could offer an original contribution to any particular field of his-
tory. Gabriel Monod’s appointment to the chair in general history came
as a kind of confirmation of “the domination of academic and analytical
historiography”.57 In 1913, in an article that reveals the disappointment
engendered by his recent setbacks, Henri Berr reminds readers of the Revue
de synthèse historique about the dangers of hyper-specialization: “Many
pragmatic academics and historians are still skeptical about the efficacy of
our research, which strikes them as a philosophical luxury and not as the
very framework of history in its definitive constitution”.58

Notes
1 Henri Berr, La Montée de l’esprit. Bilan d’une vie et d’une œuvre (Paris: Albin
Michel, 1955).
2 Cristina Chimisso writes that Berr’s history “as a science, is neither a metaphys-
ics, which is general by a priori, no erudition, which is mere a collection of facts
that does not attain general knowledge”, Writing the History of the Mind: Phi-
losophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 92.
3 See William R. Keylor, Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French
Historical Profession (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).
4 Fustel de Coulanges, “Une leçon d’ouverture et quelques fragments inédits”,
Revue de synthèse historique (2, 1901), p. 243.
5 Henri Berr, Foreword. In Fustel de Coulanges, “Une leçon d’ouverture et
quelques fragments inédits”, p. 242.
6 Émile Boutroux, De la contingence des lois de la nature (Paris: Félix Alcan,
1913), p. 169.
7 Émile Boutroux, Science et religion dans la philosophie contemporaine (Paris:
Flammarion, 1913), p. 358.
 Henri Berr, the Theoretician of Historical Knowledge 85
8 Émile Boutroux, “Histoire et synthèse”, Revue de synthèse (1, 1900), p. 12.
9 Henri Berr, “Essais sur la science de l’histoire. La Méthode statistique et la ques-
tion des grands hommes”, Nouvelle revue (64, 1890), pp. 516–518.
10 Ibid., p. 525.
11 Ibid., pp. 726–727.
12 Henri Berr, “L’Histoire des romans de M. A. Daudet. Contributions à l’étude de
la formation d’œuvre d’art”, Revue bleue (25, 1888), pp. 242–247.
13 Henri Berr, “Essais sur la science de l’histoire”, pp. 731–732.
14 Ibid., p. 735.
15 Ibid., p. 741.
16 Félix Ravaisson, La Philosophie en France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1983).
17 Émile Boutroux, “La Philosophie en France depuis 1867”, Revue de Métaphy-
sique et de Morale(1908), pp. 683–716.
18 Henri Berr, Vie et science. Lettres d’un vieux philosophe strasbourgeois à un
jeune étudiant parisien (Paris: Armand Colin, 1894), p. 5.
19 Henri Berr, Peut-on refaire l’unité morale de la France? (Paris: Armand Colin,
1901), p. 52.
20 Henri Berr, Vie et science, pp. 182–185.
21 Henri Berr, Peut-on refaire l’unité morale de la France?, p. 6.
22 Henri Berr, Vie et science, p. 97.
23 Ibid., p. 174.
24 Henri Berr, Du Scepticisme de Gassendi (Paris: Albin Michel, 1960), p. 13.
25 Ibid., p. 16.
26 Ibid., p. 27.
27 Henri Berr, “Gassendi, historien des sciences”. In Rapports et comptes rendus du
deuxième congrès international de philosophie (Genève, 1904), p. 856.
28 Gassendi quoted in Henri Berr, Du Scepticisme de Gassendi, p. 85.
29 Ducham Nedelkovitch, “Gassendi et Henri Berr”, Revue de synthèse (85, 1964),
p. 110.
30 Henri Berr, L’Avenir de la philosophie. Esquisse d’une synthèse des connais-
sances fondée sur l’histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1899), p. 300.
31 Ibid., pp. 305–308.
32 Ibid., p. 444.
33 Ibid., pp. 319–320.
34 Ibid., p. 321.
35 Ibid., p. 445.
36 Ibid., p. 416.
37 Ibid., p. 418.
38 Martin Siegel, Science and the Historical Imagination in French Historiographi-
cal Thoyght, 1866–1914 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis: Columbia University, 1965),
p. 186; J. Benrubi, Les sources et courants de la philosophie contemporaine en
France (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1933).
39 Ibid., pp. 427–428.
40 Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (7, 1899), p. 16.
41 This is clearly illustrated by Gabriel Monod. See his review of L’Avenir de la
philosophie. In La Revue historique (70), p. 99.
42 Henri Berr, La Synthèse en histoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1953), p. 119.
43 Ibid., p. 118.
44 Christophe Prochasson, “Histoire et sociologie: Henri Berr et les durkheimiens
(1900–1914)”. In Agnès Biard, Dominique Bourel, Éric Brian (eds.), Henri Berr
et la culture du XXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel/Centre international de synthèse,
1997), pp. 61–79.
45 Henri Berr, La Synthèse en histoire, p. 127.
46 Ibid., p. 165.
86 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
47 Ibid., p. 193.
48 Célestin Bouglé, “Histoire et sociologie”, Annales sociologiques (Fasc. 1, 1934),
p. 177; Jacques Faublée, “Henri Berr et L’Année sociologique”, Revue de syn-
thèse (85, 1964), pp. 68–74.
49 In 1932, Henri Berr, with Lucien Febvre, showed the distinction between history
and sociology. “What is the distinction between the work of the sociologist and
that of historian? The one exerts himself by concentrated work of comparison
to detach specific necessities, to characterize and classify social types, to create
their statics and their dynamics. The other utilizes the data furnished by sociol-
ogy the better to understand and clarify the role of the social element in history;
he knows, however, that besides the necessary [. . .] and besides the contingent
he will strike facts, logic, ideas; and he therefore avoids sacrificing to one of
these three orders the other two. He thus, for example, aschews the adoption
of a purely sociological interpretation of history, in which the social being is
considered as an irreducible item of data, as the primordial source of all human
facts. This is an act of prudence, which at one reserves and introduces a very
great question, that of the role in the history of the individual—that ‘intermedi-
ary between chance and necessity’—and of his position at the various stages of
evolution in relation to society” (Henri Berr and Lucien Febvre, “History”. In
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1932), p. 365.
50 Madeleine Rebérioux, “Le débat de 1903: historiens et sociologues”. In Charles-
Olivier Carbonell and Georges Livet (eds.), Au Berceau des Annales, le milieu
strasbourgeois (Toulouse: Presses de l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Toulouse,
1983), pp. 219–230; Alice Gérard, “À l’origine du combat des Annales: posi-
tivisme historique et système universitaire”. In Charles-Olivier Carbonell and
Georges Livet (eds.), Au Berceau des Annales (Toulouse: Presses de l’Institut
d’études politiques, 1983), pp. 79–88.
51 Gabriel Monod, “La Chaire d’histoire au Collège de France”, Revue bleue (4,
1905), 5–43.
52 Henri Berr quoted in Martin Siegel, “Henri Berr et la Revue de synthèse histo-
rique”. In Charles-Olivier Carbonell and Georges Livet (eds.), Au Berceau des
Annales (Toulouse, 1983), p. 229.
53 See François Simiand, Histoire du travail au Collège de France. Leçon d’ouverture
(Paris: Félix Alcan, 1932).
54 On the issue of academic chairs in the beginnings of the 20th century, see Terry
N. Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of
the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973).
55 Robert C. Rhodes, The Evolution in French Historical Thought: Durkheim’s
Sociologism as a Major Factor in the Transition from Historicism (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis: University of California, Los Angeles, 1974), p. 198.
56 Martin Siegel, “Henri Berr et la Revue de synthèse historique”, p. 211.
57 Giuliani Gemelli, “Communauté intellectuelle et stratégies institutionnelles”,
Revue de synthèse (2, 1987), p. 230.
58 Henri Berr, “Nouvelle série”, Revue de synthèse (27, 1913), p. 2.
4 Henri Berr, the Organizer
and Promoter of Synthesis

History is synthesis. It links the accidental to the necessary and the logical;
it brings the sciences together and indicates the principles of unity. But uni-
fying knowledge also means uniting the specialists who come from various
fields. In his first book, Vie et science, Henri Berr deplores the isolation to
which the members of the scientific community have consigned themselves.
“Synthesis is not yet organized. A few rare minds are attempting it, but there
is no common accord in support of it”.1 How, then, and by what means was
the unity of knowledge to be constructed?
Henri Berr’s approach was driven by a keen concern for organization. In
1900, he founded the Revue de synthèse historique, and the issues at stake
were clearly defined: the idea was, through “cooperative arrangements”, to
specify the role that history should play in the family of the social sciences.2
It is not surprising that many of the works published in the first years of
the Revue dealt with questions of method, theory and epistemology.3 In the
wake of the First World War, Berr attempted to test the validity of his theo-
retical thinking on the field of history itself. The Évolution de l’Humanité,
which he founded in 1919, responded to this concern to construct a fully
concrete history.4

Objectives of the Revue de Synthèse Historique

Synthesis presupposes unity. In the very first lines of his dissertation, Henri
Berr recalls this point: “Synthesis must absorb all the energies, it must revive
the ancient spirit of adventure. To launch ourselves on the conquest of the
great unknown, to test the hypothesis of unity; to achieve the ultimate goals
of being: is this not an exciting adventure?”5 These words have the over-
tones of a program. In writing the conclusion to his thesis, Berr was no
doubt thinking of founding a journal in which history would be called upon
to “test the hypothesis of unity”.
It was in this vein that the Revue de synthèse historique was launched.
From the outset, the young Berr was attracted by the historical ferment
bubbling on the other side of the Rhine.6 There, history was being prac-
ticed in a way that sought to link the march of events to the meandering
88 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
development of ideas. “In tracing our program”, he wrote a few years later,
“we had our eyes set on Germany”.7 The contents of the first edition of
the Revue de synthèse historique did not conceal this: it included a mono-
graph by A. Bossert8 and an article by the eminent German historian Karl
Lamprecht.9
The Revue de synthèse historique, which in this regard is difficult to com-
pare with the French historical journals of the time, set out to take stock of
scientific life and to encourage the sciences to specify their object in relation
to synthesis. Such an intent is curiously similar to the avowed purpose of
the Année sociologique. There is no doubt, moreover, that the Revue was
greatly inspired by the Durkheimian project, although it was not the mouth-
piece of any school or doctrine. One section of the journal, in fact entitled
the L’Année sociologique, under the editorship of Edmond Goblot, summa-
rizes and analyzes the works of the Durkheimian group.
In the first years of its existence, the Revue de synthèse historique’s arti-
cles dealt primarily with the theory of history, philosophy of history and
the history of ideas.10 “There may be many theoretical studies at the outset:
needless to say, this is a vein that will quickly become exhausted. And do
not be alarmed at the word ‘theory’: as used here, it is certainly not a call
for those vague, overly general considerations uttered by thinkers who have
no practical experience of history”.11 By 1913, Henri Berr senses that he has
succeeded in his mission: “The theory of history is a necessity, and at the
time when the Revue was founded it was too neglected, at least in France
[. . .] Our essential concern has been to promote the theory of history, to
elucidate the principles and to prepare the framework for an explanatory
science, as far removed from pure analysis or from narration as it is from a
priori philosophy”.12
From a theoretical viewpoint, the program of the Revue de synthèse
historique sought merely to reinforce the historical psychology that Henri
Berr was constantly promoting in his own works: “To arrive through his-
tory at psychology is absolutely necessary, but it is an infinitely delicate
task. This Revue, in sponsoring works of this kind, does not attempt to
conceal the difficulties: it does not seek to encourage the fantasies that
have nothing to do with science. It hopes to lead the solid academic sci-
ences to a synthesis, not only by bringing them together but also by deep-
ening them and unifying them; it hopes, then, to elicit essays on historical
psychology”.13 This historical psychology must examine man from mul-
tiple aspects: “The comparative study of societies must lead us to social
psychology, to a knowledge of the basic needs that institutions respond
to, and their shifting manifestations. The study of historical series must
lead to the psychology of great men of action and thought, of ethnic indi-
vidualities, of critical points in history. And it is a task of psychology, an
important and delicate one, to shed light on the role played in history by
the intellectual element”.14
 Henri Berr, the Organizer and Promoter of Synthesis 89
The Dialogue Between Historical Synthesis
and Sociology
The Revue de synthèse historique sought, then, to move beyond sociology
while drawing inspiration from it. As Henri Berr saw it, sociology, far from
being the master science that it claimed to be, was in fact merely an intro-
ductory course to historical synthesis.15
But it had nevertheless a fundamental role in laying the groundwork for a
general science of history, and accordingly the Revue de synthèse historique
reserved a good deal of space from the outset for recent works of sociology.
“Positive sociology will play a prominent part in this journal”, Henri Berr
stressed.16 Sociologists, and in particular those recruited to the Durkheim
school, were invited to help with the task of opening up the historical disci-
pline, and to define their viewpoint with respect to synthesis.
A great many Durkheimians responded favorably to this invitation.
Indeed, during the first five or six years of its existence, the Revue was
literally inundated with sociological works. This collaboration by the soci-
ologists with the Revue raised a number of eyebrows. Hubert Bourgin main-
tained that “with his historical synthesis, Henri Berr has founded a kind of
preparatory school for sociology, following in the path of Durkheim and
Lévy-Bruhl”.17 And Fernand Braudel complained that “the Revue de syn-
thèse has been too attentive to sociology”.18
Despite his fruitful collaboration with the Durkheimian group, Henri
Berr remained skeptical of a purely sociological interpretation of historical
evolution.19 “However legitimate and important sociology may be, can it
really plumb the depths of history? We do not believe so. But whatever our
convictions, we must recognize that we have a problem here. Sociology is
the study of what is social in history—but is history all social? The role of
individuals, the role of great historical personages, which comparative soci-
ology simply dismisses as unimportant—is that role really so negligible?”20
This was the question that two collaborators of the Revue de synthèse his-
torique, A.D. Xénopol and Paul Mantoux, set out to answer.

A.D. Xénopol
A Romanian scholar with a doctorate from Berlin and the author of a his-
tory of Romania, Alexandru Dimitrie Xénopol (1847–1920) devoted much
of his work to wrestling with the problems of historical theory. From the
outset, he was a prolific contributor to the Revue de synthèse historique,
and his byline was rarely absent from the issues of the Revue in the first
years of the century.
One of Xénopol’s primary objectives was to specify the role of history in
the hierarchy of knowledge. His concept of science, his ideas and his lan-
guage often recall the scientific positivism of the mid-19th century. Science,
he wrote, “is not a creation of our mind, as are religion, the arts or the forms
90 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
of government. It is the reflection in the understanding, the projection of the
reason of things into human reason”. Hence the universal value of scientific
knowledge: “Science is unique and cannot be shaded according to the dif-
ferent minds in which it manifests itself [. . .] Truth is unique and it knows
no country”.21
For Xénopol, the sciences must be classed according to the orders of
the phenomena that we observe in nature. Nature contains phenomena of
two orders: those of “repetition” and those of “succession”.22 “Repetition”
deals with similarities, with stability, while on the contrary, “succession”
relates to the singular and the variable. But there is another difference: the
fundamental characteristic of repetitive facts is that, contrary to successive
facts, they can be foreseen and predicted. Thus, Xénopol argues that repeti-
tive facts are “general as to time”, while “successive facts are always specific
as to time”. Must science, then, confine itself only to the general, as the old
axiom would have it? Not at all, replies Xénopol, for nature comprises both
repetitive and successive facts, and we can conceive of history as a scientific
discipline because it “constitutes one of the two universal modes for con-
ceiving the world”.23
History is considered here as a perfect example of a science of the indi-
vidual, the unique. “The principal element of the history of the formation of
the universe”, says Xénopol, “consists in the changes that appear only once
in the ocean of time, to cast their shadow and never to return”.24 Historical
facts are unique: they never repeat themselves, but rather, they change over
time. History, Xénopol tells us, must be “considered as a development and
not as an eternal repetition of the same phenomena”.25 The task of history is
to link and coordinate individual facts among themselves in order to discern
laws. It is theoretically possible, then, to arrive at a scientific explanation
based on individual or successive facts.
This concept of history, which insists on the prime causality of individual
facts, placed Xénopol in direct opposition to the theoretical stances of the
newly minted sociology. In contrast to history, which he understands as a
science of succession, Xénopol defines sociology as a science of “repeti-
tion”. Sociology, he says, is interested first and foremost in permanent and
stable facts (institutions, beliefs, manners etc.), while history focuses on
individual and variable facts (wars, treaties, events). More precisely, the role
of history is to “localize” and to “individualize human actions”.26 As he
saw it, sociology misunderstood the scientific importance of the individual
person or fact: this was a serious error in his view, for the individual and
the accidental are an important part of any scientific object. Social facts,
despite their apparent irreducibility, are themselves the result of individual
causes, and they are individualized in many ways, in particular by time and
by space. In short, the social fact “happens only once in the course of the
ages and never occurs again in an identical way”.27 As long as sociology
fails to recognize the role and the importance of the individual in the intel-
lectual process, its method will remain defective. “In this struggle between
 Henri Berr, the Organizer and Promoter of Synthesis 91
sociology and history”, Xénopol concludes, “it is the latter that will emerge
victorious, for truth is on its side”.28

Paul Mantoux
The economic historian Paul Mantoux (1877–1956) can certainly not be
called a traditional historian. His contribution to the debate that raged
between history and sociology at the beginning of the century is still quoted.
In the 1903 issue of the Revue de synthèse historique, Mantoux penned
one of his rare articles, “Histoire et sociologie”, in which he took issue
with François Simiand and insisted on the possibility of a science of the
individual. Despite the severe tone of the article, the young Paul Mantoux,
author of La Révolution industrielle au XVIIIe siècle, in fact hoped to forge
an alliance between history and sociology. But the best way to do this, he
maintained, was first to appreciate the specificity of the two disciplines.
The distinction between history and sociology that Paul Mantoux offers
can be reduced to this simple expression: history is a narrative discipline,
and as such it cannot be considered a science on a par with chemistry or
physics, whereas sociology, in seeking to discover stable and permanent
causal relationships, is indeed a science. As to the similarities between the
two disciplines, Mantoux observes (as did Charles Seignobos) that both use
the same “mode of knowledge”, one that is indirect. Because of this, soci-
ology is as far removed as history from the type of observation that we
find in the natural sciences: “Not only the majority of past facts but also
the immense majority of present facts are impossible to observe directly”.29
Such a statement does not take us very far. In effect, Mantoux’s contribution
lies in the definition of a possible meeting point between history and sociol-
ogy, which he illustrates through the contrasts and the similarities between
the two disciplines.
Historical material offers some valuable lessons to the emerging soci-
ology, seeking to distance itself from metaphysical interpretations: “The
sociologist is constantly obliged to turn to history for the terms of his rea-
soning, and he implicitly assumes that what he borrows from history will be
sound and appropriate”.30 How can sociology forge links with a discipline
that gives pride of place to narration, to events and to individuals? No one
has demonstrated, Mantoux maintains, that the individual “is not and can
never be a cause, in the scientific sense of the word; one would have to
be certain that, in eliminating the individual, one is not dispensing with
something essential”.31 The individual, then, can act as an efficient cause: as
Mantoux and Lacombe both stress, the individual can be the origin of the
institutional and of the general.
Paul Mantoux is proposing here a thesis that reflects the essential con-
clusions of social psychology. He describes collective life as the result of
the multiplication of psychological elements. In this way, Mantoux takes
issue with the Durkheimian concept of causality: “It is possible—and even
92 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
probable—that social phenomena have no cause, in the scientific meaning
of that word, except other social phenomena. But this is only an assump-
tion, one that we must accept provisionally and under benefit of inventory.
Moreover, along with the idea of cause we have another one—that of neces-
sary condition”. In chemistry, “the cause of a chemical phenomenon can be
found only by comparing certain bodies; but there are conditions of heat
that are essential to producing the phenomenon. Because heat belongs to the
realm of physics, are we therefore to condemn thermo chemistry? The devel-
opment of a city is a social phenomenon; we may assign it whatever social
cause we wish, but it is subject to geographic conditions that we cannot
overlook”.32 It is legitimate, then, to believe that any phenomenon, natural
or social, comprises both necessities and contingencies. If the role of the
sociologist is to demonstrate the necessary element of a social phenomenon,
it is up to the historian to identify the contingent element. It is precisely in
this division of duties that history and sociology become complementary
disciplines.
As will be appreciated from the foregoing analyses, Paul Mantoux adopts
a methodological posture quite similar to that of Henri Berr. Standing half-
way between Durkheim and Gabriel Tarde, Mantoux interprets social life
as the product of constraint and imitation. This is nicely illustrated by his
example of language: “A language is perfectly distinct from those who speak
it: it is a thing. Language imposes itself on individuals. Language is imitated:
it is and it remains at all times the product of imitation”.33

A Historical Encyclopedia: The Évolution de

l’Humanité
The second round of collective work orchestrated by Henri Berr began in
1920, when he launched a vast historical encyclopedia, entitled L’Évolution
de l’Humanité, which he proposed as a “mirror of world civilization”.34
At first glance, this was hardly an original undertaking: it was a frequent
practice at that time to enlist various authors to put together a universal
history. The approach was often the same: the collaborators, for the most
part historians by training and profession, shared out the tasks according to
their field of specialization. As a rule, each author would cover a particular
area: each work would open and close with a date and an event. Henri Berr
departed sharply from this tradition, however: he recruited his collaborators
from among the elite of social science practitioners, and not all of them were
historians.
Then too, the material addressed by the Évolution de l’Humanité was
immense in scope, extending from prehistory to the modern day, and it cov-
ered fields as new and diverse as the history of art and literature, the history of
science and the history of ideas and mentalities. Each of the works was inde-
pendent and dealt with a particular problem. The collaborators were highly
diversified both in their training and in their theoretical approaches: “We are
 Henri Berr, the Organizer and Promoter of Synthesis 93
quite happy to count among our different collaborators a variety of tendencies
and of guiding hypotheses, with the result that the Évolution de l’Humanité
truly represents an experiment, as promised, in which various explanatory fac-
tors are tested and their explanatory power measured”.35 As editor, Berr wrote
and signed a lengthy preface to each of the works, setting out and discussing
the author’s thesis and recalling the principles of synthesis.

The Ambitions of the Évolution de l’Humanité

As we have seen, in its early years the Revue de synthèse historique consisted
primarily of theoretical works. The design of the Évolution de l’Humanité
was different, although it was fully complementary. It was no longer a mat-
ter of discussing theory, but rather, as Henri Berr promised, to put into prac-
tice the principles of historical synthesis, and to verify their validity in the
face of the facts: “The theory of history which was developed in the Revue,
and which we have described in our Synthèse en histoire, must be put into
application [. . .] hence, the Évolution de l’Humanité, a work of collective
synthesis, emanating from the Revue and intended to test its theoretical
outcomes”.36 History thereby departs from pure speculation. In 1913, Berr
was already speaking of his theoretical concerns as things of the past: “We
now believe that there is something else to pursue beyond theory, or timid
attempts to apply theory in narrow articles”.37 The idea is simple and harks
back to the deepest aspirations of positivism: history must become a useful
and concrete science. The events of 1914–1918 would only reinforce this
belief, which was already deeply rooted in Henri Berr’s mind. In the wake
of the war, he wrote, “what history must do is direct itself clearly towards
resolving the problems that affect life, the life of peoples and the life of indi-
viduals, material life and the life of the mind”.38
It is difficult to say just when Henri Berr conceived the idea of preparing
a universal history. Some passages from his work might suggest that this
project was in gestation from the earliest years of his youth. What we know
with certainty, however, is that Berr was taking serious steps in this direction
as early as 1910 (recruiting collaborators, making contact with potential
publishers, etc.). From 1912 on, the plan of the Évolution de l’Humanité
was sketched out, and the following year Berr announced his project to
readers of the Revue de synthèse historique.39 The first volume was planned
for 1914, but Berr’s enthusiasm was squelched by the war. The Évolution
de l’Humanité would not appear for another six years. In 1920, a book by
Edmond Perrier, dealing with “the earth before history” (La terre avant
l’histoire), was published as the first installment of the collection; this was
eventually followed by around a hundred further papers, more than 50 of
them with prefaces by Henri Berr.
In the general introduction to the collection, Henri Berr cites two essen-
tial factors that he believes are highly favorable to the writing of a universal
history: the development of historical studies, aided by a multitude of new
94 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
social sciences, on one hand, and the globally prevalent conditions affecting
people’s lives. The Évolution de l’Humanité was indeed a child of its time.
Berr, who had witnessed the horrors of the First World War, was quick to
remind his readers of the necessity, the urgency of a rebirth of historical
studies in order to meet the needs of a constantly evolving society. And he
considered that this rebirth depended on pursuing paths of research often
overlooked by the historical community, such as the history of mentalities,
the history of religions, the history of civilizations or the history of sciences.
Such an undertaking would demand, once again, the collaboration of spe-
cialists from all the social sciences.

The Évolution de l’Humanité and Sociology

If, as Lucien Febvre suggested, the Revue de synthèse historique was “the
Trojan horse of sociologists”,40 the community of sociologists, and more
particularly the Durkheimian group, continued to collaborate enthusiasti-
cally with the Évolution de l’Humanité. Marcel Mauss was, in fact, their
spokesman: “Some of us are and will be collaborating on this new project
(the Évolution de l’Humanité), and we follow its success and applaud it
with great enthusiasm”.41
What were the services that sociology was expected to render? How did
it define its role in producing the Évolution de l’Humanité? Sociology, when
it is aware and rigorous, considers societies as societies only. The task of the
sociologist, according to Henri Berr, “is to study social organization, but
from a comparative viewpoint. In order better to define the essential func-
tions of society as they translate into institutions, to specify more clearly the
relationship of those functions with the social structure and their reciprocal
interplay, it isolates the social element of history. It is an aspect of historical
synthesis, but it is only one aspect. Historical synthesis puts this element,
social necessities or laws, in contact with other elements of history that pure
sociologists tend to overlook or even to deny”.42
In the early 1920s, then, the place of sociology had not changed in Berr’s
mind. “We must not imagine that the social element provides the key to his-
tory”, he reminds us.43
For Henri Berr, the “key to history” lies in logic. For it is the logical fac-
tor, he writes, “which gives to evolution its real continuity, its internal law.
It is in relation to that factor, it is in the measure to which they serve or
contradict it that contingencies derive their real value [. . .] [the logical fac-
tor] alone produces something new, only it is creative”.44 In fact, says Berr,
echoing Cournot, collective life has its source in the mental structure of indi-
viduals: “Society, let us say it again, does not think; it is the individual who
thinks: thus he can be more than a social agent; he can be a social initiator,
an inventor. Mental logic and social logic have the same profound source,
and it is here that they meet. Born of the successes of action, thought works
in the individual to serve action, to enhance social life”.45
 Henri Berr, the Organizer and Promoter of Synthesis 95
Henri Berr’s prefaces are rife with similar passages: often, to highlight
the limits of the Durkheimian method, he insists on the reciprocal action of
contingency, of necessity and of logic, while opposing any organization of
historical material as a function of chronology and of the great conventional
dividing lines in history. This concept of history finds perhaps no better rep-
resentation than in Lucien Febvre’s Rabelais: “No one should be surprised”,
writes Berr in reference to this work, “if, in a book intended to study the evo-
lution of mankind, we have admitted that one man can be the ‘center’ of an
entire volume. This work seeks to be explanatory: now, explanation involves
a study of the role of the individual either as interpreter of his time or as ini-
tiator of the future. And here it is exactly a matter of knowing to what extent
the individual reflects his century, to what extent he was able to surpass or
move beyond it”.46 The great achievement of Lucien Febvre, Berr says in
relation to another work, is that he perfectly understood the creative role of
the individual: “Considered action, creative intelligence, demonstrated deter-
mination in grappling with the obscure powers of the milieu, and struggling
to apply them as best he can to their needs, which give birth to States, he
(Febvre) knows very well that all this is the domain of individuals”.47
In these ideas we can discern the theory of history that was already apparent
in the works of Henri Berr’s youth. For him, the origins of social organiza-
tion can be explained only by the amalgamation of a multitude of individual
and rational choices. The individual associates with his peers, not through a
contract, “but with the awareness of the benefits of mutual help, in terms of
expanding their lives”. In other words, society “does not precede individuals:
it is made by them, thanks to appropriate states of consciousness. It is linked to
the progress of the psyche: like it, it tends to expand life”.48 This passage illus-
trates the difference, noted initially, between the problems addressed respec-
tively by Berr and by Durkheim. As Berr sees it, solidarity of the mechanical
kind, characterized by the social constraint, cannot be considered as the first
stage of human evolution. And Berr reminds us forcefully in his preface to the
book by the Durkheimian Louis Gernet, “in the initial psyche, man’s emotions
in the face of nature were complex: perhaps fear was the dominant one, but
he recognized and trusted what was good in things. This trust, as it became
stronger, led in turn to a desire for union, for identification with the good and
protective being”.49 We cannot speak, then, of coercion at this stage of human
evolution, for the bonds between individuals are still too embryonic. But,
according to Berr, this period was short-lived. Little by little, a kind of symbio-
sis emerged between individuals, which Berr calls the “mass” or “crowd state”
[état de foule]. And it is in this “crowd state” that social institutions develop.
Society and individuals are then caught up in a relentless dialectical move-
ment. In the preface to Des clans aux empires, of which one of the co-authors
was Georges Davy, a guardian of Durkheimian orthodoxy, Berr mentions this
explicitly: “We must be most emphatic on this point, that society is tied to the
psyche. Society benefits from its progress, and it contributes to that progress.
Even while absorbing individuals, it develops individuality”.50
96 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
When did the second phase of humanity begin? Henri Berr provides no
dates, of course, but he considers that mankind’s first period ended when
the social constraint made its appearance—in other words, when collec-
tive life imposed its coercive power upon individuals. “We imagine our
origins, then, as something moving and progressive, where the individual
and society create each other—up to the point where the society that is
taking shape and the individual who is developing come into conflict, real
or virtual. It is then that the social being, in order fully to realize its own
nature, exerts the maximum coercion”.51 The social constraint becomes so
strong that not only do institutions “restrict all individual activities, but the
psyche itself becomes institutionalized”. Individuals become homogenous,
and individual initiatives tend to be suppressed. “Creative spontaneity, from
which social organization was born, has been suffocated over time by that
same organization, and the creative spirit is broken by the socialization of
thought [. . .] In order for progress to continue, in order for representations
and then for concepts to be molded on beings and on things, there must be
a plasticity which the pseudo-primitive has lost”.52 For Berr, progress does
not follow a straight line, as Durkheim suggests it does.
The third phase of human evolution, characterized not by spontaneity
but rather by liberty, begins when “the role of the individual is expanding
steadily and at the same time society has become more lively and more plas-
tic, without necessarily compromising its vitality”.53
The general hypothesis underlying this law of the three states or phases
is, in reality, merely a continuation of the dialogue with Durkheimian sociol-
ogy. “We are pleased to note”, says Berr, “that in this concept the essentials
of Durkheimian sociology are retained and assimilated”. Berr is, however,
quick to add a nuance that immediately takes the form of a methodological
critique: “This rigid society, which exerts sovereign pressure on the indi-
vidual, which shapes the individual entirely, right to his most intimate being,
we accept it—but not as the first fact of history: if it appeared ready made,
it would be inexplicable, and it would be impossible to understand how it
could have produced something that is in contradiction or indeed in conflict
with its very nature”.54 In short, the point of contention between Berr and
Durkheim lies in the quest for the origins of social life.

Notes
1 Henri Berr, Vie et science. Lettres d’un vieux philosophe strasbourgeois à un
jeune étudiant parisien (Paris: Armand Cloin, 1894), pp. 5–6.
2 On the beginnings of the Revue de synthèse historique, see this well-informed
article: Martin Fugler, “Fondateurs et collaborateurs, les débuts de la Revue de
synthèse historique”. In Agnès Biard, Dominique Bourel, and Éric Brian (eds.),
Henri Berr et la culture du XXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel/Centre international
de synthèse, 1997), pp. 173–188.
3 Enrico Castelli Gattinara, Les Inquiétudes de la raison. Épistémologie et histoire
en France dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Vrin/École des Hautes Études en Sci-
ences Sociales, 1998).
 Henri Berr, the Organizer and Promoter of Synthesis 97
4 Suzanne Delorme, “Henri Berr”, Osiris (10, 1952), pp. 5–6.
5 Henri Berr, L’Avenir de la philosophie. Esquisse d’une synthèse des connais-
sances fondée sur l’histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1899), pp. 510–511.
6 At the end of his life, Berr declared that his “intellectual roots” lay in the French
thought. “Henri Berr par lui-même”, Revue de synthèse (85, 1964), p. 4.
7 Henri Berr, “Les études historiques et la guerre”, Revue de synthèse historique
(29, 1919), p. 7; Le Germanisme contre l’esprit français. Essai de psychologie
historique (Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1919). On Berr and Germany, see
Peter Schöttler, “Henri Berr et l’Allemagne”. In Agnès Biard, Dominique Bourel,
and Éric Brian (eds.), Henri Berr et la culture du XIXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel/
Centre international de synthèse, 1997), pp. 189–203.
8 A. Bossert, “Portraits d’historiens: Niebhur, Ranke, Sybel, Mommsen”, Revue
de synthèse historique (1, 1900), pp. 137–157.
9 Karl Lamprecht, “La Méthode historique en Allemagne”, Revue de synthèse
historique (1, 1900), pp. 21–27.
10 Henri Berr, “Le Problème des idées dans la synthèse historique, à propos
d’ouvrages récents”, Revue de synthèse historique (8, 1904), pp. 129–149; “Une
nouvelle philosophie de l’histoire, l’orgueil humain de M. Zyromski”, Revue de
synthèse historique (9, 1904), pp. 46–52.
11 Henri Berr, “Sur notre programme”, Revue de synthèse historique (1, 1900), p. 1.
12 Henri Berr, “Nouvelle série”, Revue de synthèse historique (27, 1913), p. 1.
13 Henri Berr, “Sur notre programme”, p. 2.
14 Ibid., p. 6. Henri Berr, “Au bout de dix ans”, Revue de synthèse historique (21,
1910), pp. 1–13; “Au bout de trente ans”, Revue de synthèse historique (1,
1930), pp. 3–8; “La Synthèse des connaissances et l’histoire”, Revue de synthèse
(26, 1950), pp. 217–238.
15 Henri Berr, “Les Travaux de l’Institut international de sociologie”, Revue de
synthèse historique (7, 1903).
16 Henri Berr, “Sur notre programme”, Revue de synthèse historique (1, 1900),
p. 4.
17 Hubert Bourgin, De Jaurès à Léon Blum. L’École Normale et la politique (Paris:
Fayard, 1938), p. 232.
18 Fernand Braudel, “Hommage à Henri Berr pour le centenaire de sa naissance”,
Revue de synthèse (85, 1964), p. 24. See Jérôme Lamy and Arnaud Saint-Martin,
“La frontière comme enjeu: les Annales et la sociologie”, Revue de synthèse
(131, 2010), pp. 99–127.
19 See Henri Berr, “Les Rapports de l’histoire et des sciences sociales d’après M.
Seignobos”, Revue de synthèse historique (4, 1902), pp. 293–302; “Les Rap-
ports de la société et de l’individu d’après M. Draghicesco”, Revue de synthèse
historique (12, 1906), pp. 197–204.
20 Henri Berr, “Sur notre programme”, pp. 4–5. See also Henri Berr and Louis
Halphen, “Histoire traditionnelle et synthèse historique”, Revue de synthèse his-
torique (23, 1911), pp. 121–130.
21 A. D. Xénopol, “La Classification des sciences et l’histoire”, Revue de synthèse
historique (2, 1901), pp. 265–266.
22 A. D. Xénopol, La théorie de l’histoire (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1908), p. 23.
23 Ibid., p. 276.
24 A. D. Xénopol, “Caractère de l’histoire”, Revue philosophique (57, 1904),
pp. 43–44.
25 A. D. Xénopol, “Race et milieu”, Revue de synthèse historique (1, 1900), p. 255.
26 A. D. Xénopol, “Les sciences naturelles et l’histoire”, Revue philosophique (50,
1900), p. 383.
27 A. D. Xénopol, “La Causalité dans la succession”, Revue de synthèse historique
(9, 1904), p. 13.
98 Henri Berr and Historical Synthesis
28 A. D. Xénopol, “Sociologie et histoire, à propos d’un ouvrage de M. Cesare
Rivera”, Revue de synthèse historique (12, 1906), p. 72.
29 Paul Mantoux, “Histoire et sociologie”, Revue de synthèse (8, 1903), p. 124.
30 Ibid., p. 127.
31 Ibid., p. 130.
32 Ibid., pp. 136–137.
33 Ibid., p. 138.
34 Louis-Philippe May, “Nécrologie. Henri Berr (1864–1954)”, Revue historique
(213–214, 1955), p. 202.
35 Henri Berr, “Préface”. In Marcel Granet (ed.), La Pensée chinoise (Paris: La
Renaissance du livre, 1934), p. xvi.
36 Henri Berr, “Au bout de trente ans”, p. 55.
37 Henri Berr, “Nouvelle série”, pp. 1–2.
38 Henri Berr, “Les Études historiques et la guerre”, Revue de synthèse historique,
29, 1919, p. 27.
39 Henri Berr. “Nouvelle série”, p. 2.
40 Martin Siegel, “Henri Berr et la Revue de synthèse historique”. In Charles-
Olivier Carbonell and Georges Livet (eds.), Au Berceau des Annales, le milieu
strasbourgeois (Toulouse: Presses de l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Toulouse,
1983), p. 206.
41 Mauss, Marcel, Review: “Henri Berr et ses collaborateurs”, L’Année soci-
ologique 1924–1925 (1, 1925), p. 288.
42 Henri Berr, En marge de l’histoire universelle (Paris: La Renaissance du livre,
1934), pp. 7–8.
43 Henri Berr, “Préface”. In Lucien Febvre (ed.), La Terre et l’évolution humaine
(Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1922), p. xvii.
44 Henri Berr, En marge de l’histoire universelle, p. 10.
45 Ibid., pp. 11–12.
46 Henri Berr, “Préface”. In Lucien Febvre (ed.), Le Problème de l’incroyance au
XVIe siècle. La religion de Rabelais (Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1947), p. ix.
47 Henri Berr, “Préface”. In Lucien Febvre (ed.), La Terre et l’évolution humaine
(Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1922), p. xxv.
48 Henri Berr, En marge de l’histoire universelle, p. 108.
49 Henri Berr, “Préface”. In Louis Gernet, Le Génie grec dans la religion (Paris: La
Renaissance du livre, 1932), p. xxxix.
50 Henri Berr, “Préface”. In Georges Davy and Alexandre Moret (eds.), Des Clans
aux empires. L’organisation sociale chez les primitives et dans l’Orient ancien
(Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1923), p. xvi.
51 Henri Berr, En marge de l’histoire universelle, p. 111.
52 Ibid., pp. 112–114.
53 Ibid., p. 117.
54 Ibid., pp. 118–119. See George Steinmetz, G, “Field Theory and Interdisciplin-
ary: History and Sociology in Germany and France in the Twenthieth Century”,
Comparative Studies and Studies in Society, (59, 2017), pp. 477–514.
Part III

The Durkheimian School

and History
5 The Durkheimian School
and History

How did Durkheim and his fellow sociologists react to the ascendant disci-
pline of “scientific history”? Lacking the weapons to wage a pitched battle
on the institutional front, the newborn sociology seized upon methodologi-
cal arguments to counter the historians of the day. The challenge was a
daunting one, for in France at the close of the 19th century, history was
widely revered as pre-eminent among the social sciences.1 From the 1880s
on, problems relating to the definition of historical method sparked ongoing
debates and mobilized a large portion of the French intelligentsia. Divergent
interpretations faced off against each other. Not only did historical dis-
course undergo profound changes, but this mutation of historical science
awakened interest in the social sciences as a whole. Philosophers became
historians, literary critics turned into historians of literature, and the soci-
ologists constructed their theories from historical materials.
Durkheim and his followers, grouped around the Année sociologique,
shared fully in the vast heritage of historical thought. From the beginning,
the effort to trace historical origins and developments brought a new depth
to sociological research, which was eager to move beyond simple “jour-
nalistic” recording.2 We might say, in fact, that Durkheim and his disciples
were attempting to apply a precise method, one that was experimental and
comparative, to the concrete facts of history.
At first glance, that assertion might seem paradoxical, given the many
issues on which the Durkheimians diverged from the historians. We must
point out immediately that it was not the notion of history as positive
knowledge that the Durkheimians were contesting, but rather the individu-
alistic determinism of certain historians. Most of the Durkheimians seem to
have recognized the importance of history, and indeed they made it one of
sociology’s principal “auxiliary sciences”.
Marcel Mauss frequently argued in favor of close collaboration between
sociology and historical science. “A better historical description of the rela-
tionships of civilization between various societies will necessarily have an
impact on our studies from many viewpoints”, he writes.3 And he adds,
“the history of religions is an essential tool, as it provides the materials to
back up the facts and guarantee their accuracy”.4 In short, he concludes
102 The Durkheimian School and History
in an article written with Paul Fauconnet, the sociologist must “take fully
on board the procedures of historical criticism”.5 In the same vein, Henri
Hubert adds: “True sociological analysis has everything to gain from origi-
nal historical research of the kind that will shed light on the furtive indica-
tors of social facts”.6
This idea that history was essentially useful for sociological explana-
tion was taken up by many other collaborators. Dominique Parodi asserted
in the pages of the Année sociologique that history is “preparatory work
prior to the constitution of the science of human actions”.7 Gaston Richard
strikes a similar note, saying that “sociology receives its materials from
history”;8 thus, he says, “it is to historical science that we must look for
real genetic sociology”.9 And in his sociological study La Responsabilité,
Paul Fauconnet declares, “we have sought to satisfy the legitimate demands
of historical criticism”.10 History exposes the facts, sociology unites them
through general relationships. “To show the unity of historical ‘factors’”,
writes Paul Lapie, “is to do sociology a service similar to that rendered
to psychology when it was shown that the three faculties of the soul are
not separate personae, but poorly delimited classes of facts”.11 Yet if the
Durkheimians were unanimously agreed on the importance of history in the
development of a positive sociology, they found it hard to concur with the
prevailing methodological principles used in the historical discipline. In fact,
practitioners of the two disciplines were constantly engaged in methodologi-
cal disputes.
In addressing such a problem, one had, of course, to begin with
Durkheim’s work. What remained then was to choose the most fertile and
the newest ideas concerning history from among those put forth by mem-
bers of the French school of sociology.
It seems best to confine ourselves to those Durkheimians who focused
their attention on contemporary Western societies. Works on ethnology or
the history of religion, of which as we know the Durkheimian school pro-
duced a great many, have been systematically left aside. It goes without
saying, however, that the frontier between historical science and ethnology
has often been difficult to trace, since at that time the barriers between
the disciplines were less apparent than they are today. Thus, we shall look
only at those Durkheimians who contributed to the first series of the Année
sociologique (1898–1913). There is a very simple reason for this decision: it
was in the first years of this journal’s existence that the problem of history
was debated most intensely. The budding sociology was at that time inclined
to define itself in relation to the science of history, which was much better
established and recognized in academic circles.
The names of Célestin Bouglé, François Simiand and Maurice Halbwachs
spring to mind immediately. Not only did they participate in the debates
on historical method, but they also placed history at the center of their
own research. The first used the materials of history to prepare a theory of
egalitarianism; the second turned to history for a positive explanation of
 The Durkheimian School and History 103
economic developments; and the last consulted historical materials in order
to construct a sociology of the collective memory.

History as an Auxiliary Science: Émile Durkheim

Durkheim’s work has been examined from various angles—political,
religious, economic—but little analysis has been devoted to the key role
that history played in his thinking.12 In fact, that role, decisive though it
was, often seems to be misunderstood. Some authors have even suggested
that Durkheim’s sociology was a-historic. Charles Andler was one of the
first to propose this idea. In 1896, in an article published in the Revue de
Métaphysique et de Morale, Andler argues that sociology (and he is thinking
of Durkheim) is incapable of offering a satisfactory and rational explanation
for democracy because it ignores history: sociologists pursue their discipline
“without psychology and without history” and, he concludes, “contem-
porary sociology in truth professes not to consult history”.13 That claim
evoked a sharp reply from Célestin Bouglé.14 It is true, Bouglé observed, that
Durkheim feared the encroachments of introspective psychology, but he had
no objection to history on that score.
Can the historical edifice be reduced to nothing more than an aggrega-
tion of singular and heterogeneous facts? Or on the contrary, is it quite
irreducible, composed solely of necessities? What is the function of history?
Is it the task of history to explain the evolution of humanity by establish-
ing laws? Or should it simply give us an account of the facts? All these
questions, which were widely debated by the historical community in the
second half of the 19th century, were of keen interest to the newly founded
sociology. In fact, we may say that Durkheim’s sociology stands somewhere
between the strict empiricism of some historians and the broad, speculative
visions of the philosophy of history.

Sociology and the Particular Sciences: The Quest

for the Unity of Knowledge
The need for organization and unity, both moral and methodological, domi-
nates all of Durkheim’s writings.
Durkheimian sociology claims to be the science of society as such: it con-
siders the “social” as a whole, distinct from its parts. Sociological science
forms a unit that is at once distinct from and superior to the “special” or
“particular” sciences, which it nevertheless needs in order to define itself.
Durkheim points this out in the very first issue of the Année sociologique:
“What the sociologists are urgently in need of, we believe, is to be regularly
informed of the investigations being performed in the special sciences: his-
tory of law, customs, religion, moral statistics, economics and so on, for
this is where the materials are to be found with which sociology must be
constructed”.15
104 The Durkheimian School and History
It is true that sociology is constructed on the basis of these sciences, but
in regrouping them it modifies them fundamentally, making them comple-
mentary to each other. Sociology thus becomes the “corpus” of the social
sciences. “Since general sociology can only be a synthesis of these particular
sciences, since it can only consist of a comparison of their most general
results, it is impossible for it to grow except to the extent to which they
themselves have progressed. It is therefore especially necessary to apply one-
self to their organization”.16 To constitute the sciences, in Durkheim’s mind,
means at the same time to initiate them to a common scientific method.
If Durkheim had stopped there, his work would have been unremark-
able, and there would be serious doubt about the utility of sociology. It is
especially important, he thinks, that sociology should demonstrate how, in
all the orders of phenomena—religious, economic, historic, demographic,
morphological—society imposes itself on the individuals who comprise it.
It is in this way that sociology can assemble the different sciences and make
them aware of their interdependence. Indeed, to arrive at a scientific expla-
nation of social facts, Durkheim maintains that the facts dealt with by the
various positive sciences must be “tied in with a specific social milieu, with
a definite type of society, and it is in the characteristics that make up this
type that we must look for the determining causes of the phenomenon under
consideration”.17 Thus, sociology begins where the work of the particular
sciences leaves off. At the moment when these sciences have compiled a
mass of raw facts, sociology moves in to derive from them explanatory laws.
According to Durkheim, the fact that sociology gathers the most varied
social facts and compares them among themselves makes it superior to the
other social sciences. If what is “social” is a whole cannot be broken down
into its parts, the same holds, in a sense, for sociological knowledge. Now,
the problem is that most social sciences tend to isolate the parts of the social
whole, thereby losing the comprehensive vision that scientific investigation
demands. If we carve up the social object, Durkheim maintains, we will
necessarily obtain only a partial understanding of that object.
In The Division of Labor, Durkheim goes on to lament: “It is long since
philosophy reigned as the science unique; it has been broken into a multitude
of special disciplines each of which has its object, method and thought”.18
Can philosophy still guarantee the unity of knowledge? Nothing could be
less certain. “What government is to society in its totality philosophy ought
to be to the sciences. Since the diversity of science tends to disrupt the unity
of science, a new science must be set up to re-establish it. Since detailed
studies make us lose sight of the whole vista of human knowledge, we must
institute a particular system of researches to retrieve it and set it off”.19 For
“philosophy is like the collective conscience of science and, here as else-
where, the role of the collective conscience diminishes as the work is divided
up”. Consequently, the sciences offer “the spectacle of an aggregate of dis-
jointed parts which do not concur. If they form a whole without unity, this
is not because they do not have a sentiment of their likenesses; it is because
 The Durkheimian School and History 105
they are not organized”. And, “if the division of labor does not produce
solidarity”,20 Durkheim concludes, “it is because the relations of the organs
are not regulated, because they are in a state of anomy”.21 It is up to sociol-
ogy to put an end to this limbo in which knowledge finds itself. “We can
expect”, Durkheim writes, “that sociology will determine a new and more
methodical redistribution of the phenomena that are the concern of those
different studies, and this is not the least of the services that our discipline
is destined to render”.22
What, then, is the role that history should play in constituting the socio-
logical corpus?

The Importance and the Role of History

When we look at Émile Durkheim’s work as a whole, it is clear that it
draws in particular upon three auxiliary sciences: statistics,23 ethnography
and history.24 While the function of moral statistics and of ethnography is
well known, that of history is less so. However, there is no doubt that in
Durkheim’s mind, history plays just as important a role as the other two sci-
ences. To be persuaded on this point, one simply has to read the preface to the
Année sociologique. After a brief discussion of the program of his journal and
the status of sociology, Durkheim demonstrates his desire to forge alliances
with neighboring sciences, and in particular with the science of history. “Our
enterprise [. . .] can help bring closer to sociology certain special sciences
that now hold themselves aloof, to our mutual detriment”. And he adds, “it
is especially history that we have in mind when speaking in that vein. Even
today, historians who take an interest in the investigations of sociologists and
feel that such matters concern them are rare. The over-generalized nature and
the inadequate documentation of our theories cause them to be regarded as
negligible; they are credited with having little more than a certain philosophi-
cal importance. And yet, history can be a science only insofar as it explains,
and it can only explain when making comparisons”.25
It is striking to note that in this program, no science other than history is
discussed or even mentioned, not even the ethnography that would occupy
such a prominent position in all the editions of the Année sociologique. This
is all the more surprising because at the time, history was seen as the great
rival of sociology. Not only did that rivalry between the two disciplines
make itself keenly felt at the institutional level, but their respective methods
were poles apart. Yet, as Durkheim saw it, this did not preclude the pos-
sibility of productive dialogue. “To my knowledge”, he wrote, “there is no
sociology worthy of the name that does not have a historical character”.26
Furthermore, “not only can sociology not do without history, but it needs
historians who are at the same time sociologists [. . .] To create historians
who know how to view historical phenomena as sociologists, or sociolo-
gists with a full grasp of historical technique—such is the goal that must be
pursued on both sides”.27
106 The Durkheimian School and History
This plea for unity raises a question. Are history and sociology destined
to be rolled into a common discipline? On several occasions, Durkheim
mentions the inevitable merger of the two disciplines: the historical and
social sciences, he says, “are close relatives”;28 they do not live in “separate,
airtight compartments”,29 they “tend to blend with each other”.30 Finally,
in a collective work, Durkheim predicts that the relations between sociology
and history “are destined to become ever closer, and one day there will be
no difference, save for nuances, between the historical and the sociological
mindsets”.31
Despite this appeal to common ground between history and sociology,
however, Durkheim refuses to accord history equal status with that of soci-
ology. His reason for this is simple: history is incapable of generalizing.
Durkheim had been profoundly convinced of this since 1888: “Generally
speaking”, he writes, “I have always found that there was a kind of con-
tradiction inherent in making history into a science but not asking future
historians to undergo any scientific training [. . .] I am very aware that
the historian is not a generalizer; his very special role is not to find laws
but to give each era, each people its own individuality and its particular
physiognomy. He dwells in the particular, and he should remain there”.32
The sociologist, by contrast, refuses to confine himself to the restrictions
of space or place; he seeks instead “verifiable laws in different societies”.33
This dichotomy is striking: the domain of sociology embraces everything
that is general and comparative, while everything that is particular and con-
tingent belongs to history. “There is in history something of the general and
permanent, which can be expressed in laws; but there is also an element of
the variable and the contingent, which is unforeseeable. The origin of these
contingencies is the individual in all of his forms: individuality of the person,
individuality of the group, geographical individuality, etc. The domain of
necessity is the very domain of sociology”.34
In light of this clear declaration of methodological imperialism, then,
what is the function of history? It serves as a research instrument, replies
Durkheim: “History, in the usual sense of the word, is to sociology what
Latin grammar or Greek grammar or French grammar, taken and treated
separately, are to the new science that has taken the name of comparative
grammar”.35 He adds, “in a word, history plays a role in the order of social
realities analogous to that of the microscope in the order of physical reali-
ties”.36 And that role is to gather the facts from which sociological theory
will emerge.
In the preface to the second edition of the Rules of Sociological Method,
Durkheim arrives at a precise and circumscribed definition of sociology, one
that he would never abandon: “One may term an institution all the beliefs
and modes of behavior instituted by the collectivity; sociology can then be
defined as the science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning”.37
And in one of his last essays on method in 1909, he insists on the need for
a historical approach: “The institution under consideration is constituted
 The Durkheimian School and History 107
progressively, bit by bit; the parts that comprise it are born one after the
other, and they are added more or less slowly to each other; all we need do,
then, is to follow the development over time, i.e. in history, in order to see
the various elements that produce it, naturally dissociated”.38
From these definitions, in which the quests for diachronic and synchronic
causes intersect, we can detect Durkheim’s intention to distance himself
from psychological reductionism or “psychologisme”. The social or insti-
tutional fact must be explained not by compiling individual manifestations
but by making it emerge from the facts gleaned from historical materials.
“The determining cause of a social fact”, Durkheim writes, “must be sought
among antecedent social facts and not among the states of the individual
consciousness”.39 The present is by itself nothing: it is no more than “an
extrapolation of the past”.40 “It is a grave mistake to think that in order to
understand man it is sufficient to study him in his most modern and devel-
oped forms. We can only understand him by analyzing him; and we can only
analyze him through the medium of history”.41 “In order to understand a
practice or an institution, a legal or moral rule, we must go back as close as
possible to its first origins; for between what it is and what it has been there
is a close interdependence”.42 “To know what these conceptions which we
have not made ourselves are really made of, it does not suffice to interrogate
our own consciousness; we must look outside of ourselves, it is history that
we must observe, there is a whole science which must be formed, a com-
plex science which can advance by slowly and by collective labor”.43 These
pithy observations, taken from Durkheim’s writings across many years, are
clearly intended to justify the historical method, but they also condemn the
individual or particular aspect in all its forms.

Durkheim’s Campaign Against Traditional History

In his various writings, Durkheim was constantly contrasting his views with
those of the historians of his time. There are numerous articles and essays
in which he openly challenges the method used by the historical discipline.
In 1903, writing in the Année sociologique, he takes issue with the the-
sis of the Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini, according to which it is the
duty of scientific history to analyze the particular. “Generally [. . .] when
one makes a science of history, one assigns as its object not the details of
particular events but the institutions, the customs and beliefs—in a word,
the collective things—whose constancy and regularity one opposes to the
contingency and the extreme fluidity of individual facts”.44 Salvemini, then,
is sowing ambiguity. History, understood scientifically, cannot give pride of
place to the individual, and Durkheim stresses this point to Henry Berr: “We
have acknowledged that historical personages have been factors in history.
But besides the fact that we believe their influence has been greatly exag-
gerated, we have shown that they themselves have their [causes] and these
are, in part, social ones”.45 Here the historical discipline is confronted with
108 The Durkheimian School and History
a dilemma: either it confines itself to examining the individual fact, in which
case it is merely a literary genre, or else it rises “beyond the individual” and
becomes a science. In the latter case, scientific history loses its reason for
existence and is completely submerged in “dynamic sociology”.46 Here we
have an obvious manifestation of the sociological imperialism often attrib-
uted to Durkheim, which claims for itself exclusivity in the scientific study
of social evolution.47
We can now readily understand the thrust and the scope of the criticism
that Durkheim directs at A. D. Xénopol. This theoretician of history, in
his book Les Principes fondamentaux de l’histoire, distinguishes the laws
of succession from the laws of repetition and arrives at the conclusion that
the first are the field of the historian, while the second are, by right, that of
the sociologist. Durkheim rebuts this approach vehemently for, as he sees
it, it would limit sociology to the study of static laws and would make the
field of dynamic laws the exclusive preserve of history.48 Such a distinction,
Durkheim maintains, has absolutely no justification. Applying the model
of Auguste Comte,49 sociology, he insists, must embrace both the static ele-
ment and the dynamic element.50 If sociology were confined to dealing with
static laws, it would be but an incomplete and partial science.
Severe as they are, these objections seem mild in comparison to those that
Durkheim levels at Seignobos during the same period. The tone changes, the
attacks become more trenchant. It will be recalled that Seignobos was the
most important historian at this time. His fame and his prestige made him
an easy target. And indeed, in the early years of the new century, a num-
ber of Durkheimians, including Dominique Parodi, François Simiand and
Hubert Bourgin, set out to debunk his methodological approach.
It was in the Année sociologique, in 1902, that Durkheim took issue
for the first time with Charles Seignobos. He was moved to this interven-
tion by the recent publication of Seignobos’s book, La Méthode historique
appliquée aux sciences sociales. The title itself was suspect. Responding in
the name of the historical community to recent manifestations of method-
ological imperialism on the part of the new sociology, Seignobos asserts the
supremacy of history over all the social sciences. He presents history as a
model of scientific rigor and analysis. The document, he maintains, guar-
antees the scientific nature of history, for it exposes the facts in their raw
state without any interference. And in a similar vein, Seignobos calls upon
the social sciences to accept the authority of the document in their quest for
objectivity. Durkheim is not at all of this view: science, he is at pains to note,
cannot confine itself to empirical observation. Facts without theory have
no explanatory value: “Science is not just an inventory of facts; it organizes
them and systematizes them”.51 Durkheim concludes that Seignobos’s con-
cern for neutrality, combined with his implicit fear that history would slide
back into metaphysics, brings him to an impasse.
In fact, the divergences between the two authors are deeper yet. Charles
Seignobos refuses to recognize the other social sciences; he considers history
 The Durkheimian School and History 109
to be “the only social science possible today”. Consequently, he objects to
the notions and the concepts found in those sciences; the notion of collective
representation strikes him as particularly obscure and untenable. In fact,
Seignobos denies any legitimacy to sociology. It is merely “a word invented
by philosophers”,52 he writes, in a manner curiously reminiscent of Fustel
de Coulanges.53 Stung by this sharp attack, Durkheim responds directly to
Seignobos in the Année sociologique: “While there is no doubt that social
life is made exclusively of representations, it by no means follows that an
objective science cannot be constructed from them. The representations of
an individual are phenomena that are equally internal, and yet contempo-
rary psychology treats them objectively. Why should it be any different with
collective representations?”54
When he faced off against Charles Seignobos a few years later in a debate
at the Société française de philosophie, the response that Durkheim received
to this question was scarcely satisfactory. The subject of the debate had to
do with explanation in history and in sociology. Although Durkheim and
Seignobos held center stage during the debate, it is interesting to note that
Marc Bloch, Paul Lacombe, Célestin Bouglé and the philosopher André
Lalande also participated, if more discreetly. In principle, this event prom-
ised to be a grand debate between history and sociology, since both disci-
plines had fielded representatives: on one side was Durkheim, accompanied
by Bouglé, defending the principles of the nascent sociology, and on the other
side were Charles Seignobos, Marc Bloch and Paul Lacombe as spokesmen
for the tribe of historians. But that grand debate never materialized: the
whole group turned against Seignobos.55 They do not argued that sociol-
ogy and history have a distinct domain. Isolated, peppered with questions,
Seignobos was visibly ill at ease. His interventions were brief but to the point.
Seignobos argues that to explain a fact, we must relate it to other facts,
and this linking of the particular to the particular can be done only through
documents. That approach, Durkheim retorts, offers only the appearance
of objectivity. History thus understood retains only the visible, often super-
ficial part of phenomena. A truly scientific explanation must look for the
general cause that gave rise to the fact. “All those who concern themselves
with studying the past know very well, however, that the immediately visible
reasons, the most apparent causes are often the least important. We must
delve much further into reality in order to understand it”.56 And if we are to
understand, we must compare.
To sum up, Durkheim refused to see history and sociology in contrasted
categories. He argued that sociology and history have distinct domain.57

The Limitations of the Philosophy of History

The approach taken by philosophers of history is the opposite of that used by
historians. Dismissive of the facts, they are intent on indicating the direction
in which humanity is taking itself. They speak of humanity or of society, but
110 The Durkheimian School and History
rarely of particular societies. Very early on, Durkheim took issue with vast
metaphysical and philosophical constructions that had no empirical under-
pinnings. Sociology, in his initial conception, should go beyond the stage of
a priori views and philosophical systems to arrive at a rational and scientific
explanation of society. This was the grand plan of Auguste Comte. But, accord-
ing to Durkheim, Comte carried his program only part way—the law of the
three stages has nothing to do with causality in the scientific sense of that term.
Durkheim’s reading of Comte is a fabric of praise and criticism. As early
as his Latin thesis on Montesquieu, Durkheim subscribed fully to the two-
part division of the sociological subject matter between social dynamics and
social statics, as we find it in Auguste Comte’s Cours de philosophie posi-
tive. Durkheim writes, “Social existence is determined by conditions of two
types. One consists of the present circumstances, such as topography or size
of population. The other pertains to the historical past. Just as a child would
be different if he had had other parents, so the nature of a society depends
upon the form of the societies preceding it”.58 Any explanation of social
phenomena must then be rooted both in the actual structure of a society
and in its history. That is to say, sociology must combine synchronic analy-
sis with diachronic analysis. The Comtean law of the three stages places
the emphasis on the historical aspect of human societies, and is “essentially
dynamic”.59 In fact, it tends to misunderstand the structural conditions of
social life. More serious yet, Durkheim observes, Comte is not interested
in particular societies, but in “human society in general”. He proposes a
linear evolutionism that relies on “a single people-subject”.60 In short, the
founding father of positivism “reasons as if humanity formed a single unit,
as if the human species, in its totality, were one and the same society that
always develops in the same sense, following a straight-line progression”.61
However, Durkheim objects, “society does not exist”,62 it is an abstrac-
tion: “it is the tribes, the nations, the particular states that are the only true
historical realities with which science can and must concern itself”. Like
individuals, societies are unique: “the child represents the continuity of its
parents, not in their mature years or their old age, but in their own child-
hood”.63 Comte, then, is being arbitrary when he concludes that humanity
has passed from the theological stage through the metaphysical stage to the
positive stage. The law of the three stages, Durkheim concludes, is “a sum-
mary review of the past history of the human race”.64
In methodological terms, Durkheim considers this approach highly
defective. It leads Auguste Comte, consciously or not, to reduce social life
to a mere epiphenomenon of mental manifestations. In Comte’s view, says
Durkheim, progress depends on an exclusively mental factor, namely “the
tendency that compels man to develop his nature more and more”. From
this perspective, psychology will “always have the last word”, and sociol-
ogy is nothing but “a corollary of psychology”.65 Durkheim’s accusation is
unequivocal: Comte has a mistaken conception both of social reality and of
sociological research.66
 The Durkheimian School and History 111
Where does Durkheim stand with respect to his contemporaries’ interpre-
tations of human evolution? He is as impatient with any retreat into strict
empiricism as he is suspicious of metaphysical flights of fancy. In the Rules
of Sociological Method, Durkheim maintains that what sociology must con-
stitute is a juncture of the “extreme realism” of historians and the “nominal-
ism” of philosophers. For the historians, he writes, societies each constitute
an individual type, “heterogeneous and not comparable with one another.
Each people has its own characteristics, its special constitution, its law, its
morality and its economic organization, appropriate only to itself, and any
generalization is almost impossible. For the philosopher, on the other hand,
all these special groupings, which are called tribes, cities and nations, are
only contingent and provisional aggregates without any individual reality.
Only humanity is real, and it is from the general attributes of human nature
that all social evolution derives. Consequently, for the historians, history is
only a sequence of events which are linked together but do not repeat them-
selves; for the philosophers, the same events have value and interest only as
an illustration of the general laws which are inscribed in the constitution of
man and which hold sway over the course of historical development [. . .] It
would therefore seem that social reality can only be the subject matter of an
abstract and vague philosophy or of purely descriptive monographs”.67
What is Durkheim telling us, in essence? That the domination of narra-
tive history is over, that the philosophy of history is obsolete and, above all,
that a new era is beginning: that of a truly scientific discipline of social facts,
careful to combine diachronic and synchronic analysis, in which empirical
facts and theory are jointly articulated.
A new avenue of research was opening up, and it called for cooperation.

A Heterodox Durkheimian: Célestin Bouglé

Although Célestin Bouglé (1870–1940) was one of the most important
and influential members of the group constituted around the Année soci-
ologique, he cannot be considered an orthodox disciple of Durkheim in
the vein of Marcel Mauss or Henri Hubert, for example.68 But he did share
their enthusiasm for a sociology that was at once positive and historical. He
drew his inspiration from a wide variety of sources, ranging from Antoine
Augustin Cournot69 to Gabriel Tarde,70 and including the works of German
social science. Bouglé thus had imposing intellectual credentials when he
joined Durkheim.
Bouglé’s work is eclectic and, at first glance, perhaps somewhat incon-
gruous.71 His writings, generally presented in the form of short essays and
articles, do not try to plumb the depths of the subject but rather to raise
questions, to open paths of research and to spark debate within the intel-
lectual community.72
Bouglé was always attentive to the latest developments in the social sci-
ences, and at an early age, he was fascinated by the novelty of the methods
112 The Durkheimian School and History
being applied in Germany. There he discovered a social science that was
inspired not by the model of biological science but rather by the procedures
of experimental psychology. Through his collaboration with Durkheim,
Bouglé acquired the principles of a positive and objective method: he became
aware of the problematic advance of individualism and of the replacement
of old social structures. How could a sociology that was attentive to the les-
sons of psychology be reconciled with Durkheimian holism? That was the
problem that Bouglé set out to resolve.

An Initial Influence: The German Social Sciences

Following the debacle of 1870, Germany came to hold great fascination for
French intellectuals.73 They might detest it, they might admire it, but they
spoke of it incessantly. Taine and Renan were distressed: they felt betrayed
by their intellectual mentor, the homeland of Hegel. While German chauvin-
ism might draw censure, however, there was unanimous praise and admira-
tion for German science. In the 1880s, a trip to Germany was seen as de
rigueur for French graduate students. The young Célestin Bouglé crossed the
Rhine in 1893 with the idea of initiating himself to new methods and origi-
nal currents of thought. There he attended the lectures of the most eminent
social scientists of the time.
Bouglé returned from this trip greatly impressed, and ready to write his
first book, Les sciences sociales en Allemagne, in which he examined the
work of four scholars “concerned with the construction of different social
sciences”: Lazarus and the comparative psychology of peoples or nations
[Völkerpsychologie], Simmel and moral science [Geisteswissenschaft],
Wagner and political economy and von Jhering and the philosophy of law.74
What did young Bouglé glean from the German social sciences? First
of all, he observed a ceaseless effort to reconcile the speculative and the
concrete. Historically, this movement evolved into four distinct phases,
beginning in the 18th century. The first phase, essentially speculative, cor-
responded to the “heroic age of German philosophy”. From Kant to Hegel,
from Fichte to Schelling, German philosophy was steeped in speculation
and a priori ideas. There was no room for facts—ideas crowded them out.
The second phase was quite the reverse: facts came to the fore, and writers
sought to be objective and impersonal. With Leopold von Ranke and his
disciples, the idea of a universal science was eclipsed: “They will indulge
themselves in the concrete, as they once did with the abstract [. . .] they will
strive to distinguish, as the speculative philosophers sought to assimilate”.
According to Bouglé, the third phase was dominated by a reaction against
empiricism: “The mind felt itself oppressed by the multiplicity of facts that
the historians were throwing at it. [Scholars] wanted to restore unity to that
multiplicity and, after drawing distinctions, assimilate it anew”. Henceforth,
one would look for laws, and to do that, one would rely on the model of
the natural sciences. “It is thus that Schäffle or Lilienfeld, in constituting the
 The Durkheimian School and History 113
science of the structure and life of society, would compare society system-
atically to an organism”. This naturalism was hotly contested by Wilhelm
Wundt and Wilhelm Dilthey, and it was with them, Bouglé tells us, that the
fourth phase began; henceforth, social facts would no longer be related to
biological phenomena, but rather to psychological ones. German thinking
thereby took a decisive step, in Bouglé’s eyes: “no longer will the facts be
ignored or ideas mistrusted, but one will try to unite facts and ideas to con-
stitute true social sciences”.75 Lazarus, Simmel, Jhering and Wagner shared
a common concern to found a science at the junction of the speculative and
the concrete, of theory and empiricism, where psychology and history are
intimately linked. Those are important names. Through the course of these
thinkers’ intellectual development, the young Bouglé, who was then writing
his thesis, looked for methodological pointers in order to develop his own
method.
Bouglé delved feverishly into the works of German thinkers, striving to
lay the foundations of a historical psychology. Social scientists in Germany,
he notes, admit the great importance of historical subject matter, but they
are not content with narration and description: they try to theorize history.
They look for the underlying causes, often difficult to grasp, that are lurk-
ing behind the facts. And they are almost unanimous in maintaining that
the causes of historical events are psychological: “Wars or institutions are
always born of and sustained by feelings and ideas, which are their very
soul and which conceal their causes; and the only laws that can appear to
us under the infinite rippling of historical evidence will be the laws of senti-
ments and ideas”. Between history and psychology, then, there is an impera-
tive division of duties: “Social life will be described by history and explained
by psychology”.76 Psychology, which is “the soul of the social sciences”,77
must therefore propose a new reading of the past.
Bouglé is not thinking here of an introspective psychology, of a search
for the soul, but rather, a social psychology or a psychology of peoples from
which laws can be derived that will “shine light on the history of peoples,
the biography of humanity, as the laws of individual psychology illuminate
the biography of individuals”.78 “The psychology needed for constructing
the social sciences is not some kind of disembodied psychology, some specu-
lation about the abstract mind, independent of all physical conditions and
all social relationships”.79 In the same vein, he lauds the German writers for
having laid bare the shortcomings of individual introspection: “To take the
individual as he appears from internal observation and to study the man-
ner and the shape of his mind without reference to the society that offers or
imposes upon him both that manner and that shape, is a scientific artifice by
which we must not be deceived”.80 It is important, then, to establish univer-
sal laws of collective life: “When we say, backed by psychological science,
that a given historic transformation must necessarily have occurred, we
understand not only that it in fact occurred in this way, whenever analogous
conditions prevailed, but that, by virtue of universal psychological laws, the
114 The Durkheimian School and History
public mind had to react the way it did”.81 History will therefore look to
psychology for these laws.82 “Psychology”, Bouglé concludes, “will serve as
the rational science for the history of humanity, just as physics and chemis-
try serve for biology, or as mechanics serves for physics and chemistry”.83
That sentence summarizes the key lesson to be learned from the method
of the German social sciences: sociology must rely both on historical induc-
tion and on psychological intuition.

The Role of Historical Method

The idea of a renewed historical science that would serve as a point of depar-
ture for sociological synthesis, or that would at least be an indispensable aid
to such synthesis, is central to Célestin Bouglé’s thinking.84 In a 1904 article
in the Année sociologique, he invites the sociology community to come to
terms with distance over time. “Sociology must not forget that it needs the
help of history, not only because history establishes the particular facts that
sociology will have to work with, but because, if sociology does not want
the laws it formulates to be sheer speculation, devoid of any temporal and
spatial rationale, if it wants to seek the laws specific to a given species or
a given social milieu, it must not neglect the mobility, the transformations,
and indeed the historical characters of that setting or that milieu”.85 There
we have it: no history, no sociology. Or rather: no historical facts, no socio-
logical theory. In his last book, Qu’est-ce que la sociologie?, Bouglé again
recalls the importance of the historical perspective: “sociological induction
demands lengthy historical research”.86
It would be useful in this regard, Bouglé thought, to encourage dialogue
between history and sociology. In 1899, when methodological disputes were
legion, Bouglé expressed the wish for “ever closer” relations between the
two disciplines.87 More than three decades later, he could at last take com-
fort in the growing dialogue between them: “We are given to hope that the
regrettable antagonism of the past between history and sociology in France
will give way to ever more fruitful collaboration”.88 We may note that
Bouglé, in his own writings, made many efforts to reconcile the sociologists
with the historians—the “ironic enemies of sociology”.89 An avid reader of
the Revue de synthèse historique, he took advantage of his editorship of the
general sociology section of the Année sociologique to follow, closely and
enthusiastically, the recent developments in historical science, and he con-
fessed in particular a sincere admiration for the work of Henri Berr.
Célestin Bouglé was not given to polemics in the debate between history
and sociology. Moreover, he remained relatively discreet in the face of the
constant methodological disputes between historians and sociologists in the
first decade of the 20th century. It is true that he took part with Durkheim,
Charles Seignobos and others in the famous debate of 1908 at the Société
française de philosophie, but he played only a secondary role there, and
his interventions, often fairly general, sought merely to affirm Durkheim’s
 The Durkheimian School and History 115
stance against Seignobos. When he drew a distinction between the work
of the sociologist and that of the historian, he cited arguments similar to
those of other Durkheimians. The moralists, like the sociologists, he wrote
in 1905, “are not content to recount events, to dwell upon major or minor
accidents, to highlight the initiatives and the revolutions that allowed this
demand (the individualistic demand) to be formulated or imposed: more
profoundly, they are trying to show that that demand has to do with the
very organization of human groupings, that it corresponds to a stage of their
evolution, that it expresses in its own way the needs that structural changes
have determined”.90
The sociologist must look behind the facts to the pressure exerted by
situations, institutions and settings. In his Essay on the System of the Caste,
Bouglé argues that “what is of special interest to us is not what passes away
but what is repeated; institutions survive the flow of events. From this point
of view it is not impossible to note even now a certain number of intel-
ligible relations between the dominant system of collective practices which
maintain the cast system and religious beliefs, juridical conceptions or eco-
nomic practices—relations which appear to be more than the product of
coincidence”.91 We must not read into this passage an outright rejection
of events and contingencies. But Bouglé insists that events are not in them-
selves scientific and that merely juxtaposing a series of miscellaneous events
has no explanatory value. An event becomes meaningful only if it leaves its
mark on an institution. And it is up to the sociologist to determine whether
a particular event is the precursor of an institutional fact.
This symbiosis of the particular and the general gives us a better idea of
how Célestin Bouglé articulates the complementarity of history and sociol-
ogy. The first, which is essentially empirical, describes and circumscribes
a host of facts, while the second, essentially theoretical, explains them by
relating them to general and permanent principles: “Through history, we
re-live facts; through the social sciences, we explain them”.92 To explain is
to search for laws. Sociology becomes, from this perspective, “an abstract
science of history”.93
Can history be an explanatory science on a par with sociology? “Any
explanation of the real must comprise one part history—a variable one—
and one part science. Whether we are speaking of chemical, geological or
social phenomena, if we are to understand them and not merely record
them, we must state the particular circumstances, on one hand, and the
general laws, on the other hand, of their production: it is from the collision
of facts with laws that light bursts forth”.94 The distinction established here
between history and science speaks for itself. History is not truly scientific,
but its subject matter lends itself to scientific investigation. The extreme
variability of historical facts must then be reduced to general principles. But
this task, as Célestin Bouglé sees it, belongs not to the historian at all, but
to the sociologist. How can we make theoretical sense of the individual fact
or event? This is a tough question, Bouglé says, and the only satisfactory
116 The Durkheimian School and History
answer lies in the work of Antoine Cournot. “An event of any nature what-
ever is not really explanatory unless we can show in it the workings of
certain laws. This amounts to observing that one particular factor does
not explain another—any explanation presupposes belief in constant rela-
tionships, anticipates properties that are more or less permanent, and uses
generalities”.95 Bouglé recommends a careful reading of Antoine Augustin
Cournot in order to overcome the impasse that prevails between history
and sociology. “We continue to hear so much debate over the value and the
respective role of the individual and the universal in history, between ‘nar-
rative historians’ and ‘sociologist historians’. Surely the too long-neglected
methodology of Cournot offers a way to reconcile the two sides by clarify-
ing the points that separate them”.96

Sociology and the Theory of Egalitarism

Like Durkheim, Célestin Bouglé thinks primarily about the present. He
considers that sociology is the answer to the anxieties and concerns of
modern societies. If the problem of the relationships between the individual
and society is at the core of Durkheim’s thesis on the division of labor, what
interests Bouglé above all is the problem of the development of egalitarian
ideas. It is true that, in his book on the social sciences in Germany, Bouglé
had betrayed some reservations about the Durkheimian method (for exam-
ple, in his call for the unity of psychology and sociology). But as Paul W.
Vogt has shown, Bouglé was an eclectic, even ambivalent, thinker. Both
in his doctoral thesis on egalitarian ideas (1898) and in his essays on the
caste system (1908), Bouglé presents himself as a fairly orthodox disciple
of Durkheim. In Les Idées égalitaires, as Maurice Halbwachs noted, there
is a research program that follows “the precepts formulated in the Règles
de La Méthode sociologique, namely that one must study social realities
as things, one must observe them from without”.97 William Logue adds
that the work of Bouglé “is a slightly mechanical application of the con-
cepts developed by Durkheim in the Division of Labor in Society (1893)
to the study of the origins and development of egalitarian ideas in Western
society”.98
In Les Idées égalitaires, we read: “Our preferences, whether or not based
on reason, no longer have any say in the matter: it is with a methodically
disinterested mind that we must address the study of egalitarian ideas, as if
they were rocks or vegetables of some kind. For us they are merely prod-
ucts that we must explain, and not judge”.99 That sounds like Taine! And
Bouglé, faithful to 19th-century French positivism, proposes a conceptual
system intended to embrace the evolution of egalitarianism in its entirety.
The demonstration involves two steps. Célestin Bouglé seeks, first, to
show that in order to find the cause of the emergence of egalitarianism
we must look to the transformations in social organization resulting from
morphological and physiological factors. He then demonstrates, using the
 The Durkheimian School and History 117
method of concomitant variations, the correspondence between the phe-
nomenon of egalitarianism and the forms of social organization.
Relying on this theoretical framework, Bouglé considers that primitive
societies, and in particular the Hindu society, will never provide fertile
ground for the growth of egalitarianism, because nowhere else is occu-
pational specialization so ingrained, organization so highly respected or
mutual “repulsion” so great. Another obstacle is that these societies are
scattered across immense territories. Hence, this conclusion: “What we can
say to this point is that the portion of the earth where egalitarian ideas
make themselves felt most clearly is also that portion where people are most
numerous”. But, Bouglé hastens to add, “the immensity of the area covered
by an empire is of little importance if, among the individuals that are its
subjects, there are and can be but few relationships. The extension of soci-
eties is efficacious only through the interrelationships between their units.
If population numbers are to influence social ideas, the many members of
the same state must really interact with each other, and they must be con-
centrated, not scattered. Now this concentration is exactly what we find in
modern nations: what distinguishes them is not so much their great volume
as their great density”.100 In urban centers, then, we will find places that are
quite favorable to the progress of egalitarian ideas.
Yet these quantitative considerations, however important they may be,
play only a secondary role in the argument, compared to the importance
that Bouglé attaches to what he calls “the quality of social units”. One
question concerns him greatly, and it dominates much of the work: is egali-
tarianism favored by the homogeneity of individuals or, on the contrary, by
their heterogeneity? Alexis de Tocqueville and Gabriel Tarde thought that
the progress of egalitarian ideas led to greater homogeneity; by contrast,
Simmel, Spencer and Durkheim maintained that it depended on heteroge-
neity. Bouglé looks for a compromise between these two opposing inter-
pretations. Thus, he argues that both homogeneity and heterogeneity both
favor egalitarianism, but for fundamentally opposite reasons: “The most
fertile soil for the sowing of egalitarian ideas is to be found in civilizations
with the greatest number of individuals who resemble each other in some
aspects while differing in others—where assimilation expands at the same
time as differentiation grows—where heterogeneity coexists, in a sense, with
homogeneity”.101
This parallel progression of homogeneity and heterogeneity, Bouglé
thinks, is a phenomenon very specific to Western societies. Egalitarianism
develops where individuals and different groups interact. The progressive
condensation of ethnic groups means that the concept of “racial purity”
is completely outmoded. For example: “In Germany, the Teutons have
interbred with the Celts and the Slavs. England is an amalgam of Britons,
Saxons, Normans, Danes. France is still more composite than all the others;
the nation that was to formulate the rights of man is also, as we are often
told, related to all races”.102 Although different at the origin, ethnic groups,
118 The Durkheimian School and History
upon meeting, merge and develop common beliefs and ideas, while never-
theless retaining their singularity. In short, everything becomes unified at the
same time as everything becomes diversified. There is no doubt that Bouglé
sees in this process an irreversible law of history.
To this, we must juxtapose “social complexity” as a condition for the
emergence of egalitarian ideas. Célestin Bouglé explains: “A society is highly
complex if the individuals who comprise it, instead of belonging to one
group only, can be part of a great number of groups at the same time”.
Social complexity thus generates a multiplication of associations: “Labor
unions or armies, clubs or churches, families or shareholder meetings, each
of these groups, through its constitution, changes the sentiments and ideas
of the individuals it embraces”.103 Consequently, “the individual is no lon-
ger locked up in any given society. He leaves one to enter another, or rather
he is engaged, but only for a portion of himself, in all of them at once”.104
According to Bouglé, it is the fact that man is part of several particular soci-
eties that is the source of his liberty; for, and this is notably the case with
primitive societies, “when an individual belongs to only one society, then he
belongs to it entirely”.105
Whence and when came the idea of equality? Célestin Bouglé does not
offer a date, but simply mentions a few milestones. He notes the tortu-
ous path taken by the idea of equality in the history of human societies.
It appears first, in embryonic state, in classical antiquity. The ancient city
was favorable, at least in theory, to equality. It was then submerged by the
feudalism of the Middle Ages, which isolated individuals within a hierarchy.
It was reborn at the end of the Ancien régime, and has since made steady
progress. What does Bouglé say about the French Revolution? Very little,
except for a few passing comments on the declaration of the rights of man.
To tell the truth, Bouglé shies away from events and individuals. What he
wants is to reconstitute the slow gestation of the egalitarian movement. And
he is quite convinced that the movement he observes is irreversible.
From the teachings of the German social sciences, Bouglé discovered the
role that history must play in the development of a positive sociology. He
quickly became convinced that the subject matter of history is a “prepara-
tory course” for any rigorous sociological analysis. The function of history
was then firmly fixed in Bouglé’s mind: it must serve to combat metaphysi-
cal views and, especially, biological reductionism.106 Unlike Durkheim, it
was the encroachments not of psychology but of biological science that
Bouglé feared most.
At first glance, Bouglé’s contributions to theory seem rather thin in com-
parison to those of Simiand or Halbwachs. If we go by the valuable article
of Johan Heilbron, Bouglé was more of a teacher than a thoroughly original
researcher.107 Hubert Bourgin describes him even more simply as a “popu-
larizer” (un vulgarisateur).108 We might also add that Bouglé was a media-
tor of the first degree and that he launched many dialogues. He was the
mediator between the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale and the Année
 The Durkheimian School and History 119
sociologique, between sociology and philosophy, between sociology and
the neighboring social sciences, between the French sociological tradition
and the German sociological tradition. According to Maurice Halbwachs,
Bouglé’s sociological contributions were crucial.109 That is why, all told,
Célestin Bouglé stands as a valuable guide for anyone seeking to reconstitute
the theoretical and methodological issues with which the fledgling sociology
had to grapple.

The Polemist and the Social Scientist:

François Simiand
In moving from Bouglé to François Simiand (1873–1935), we detect a shift
in style and in language. Simiand did not pay much attention to form: his
writing style is turgid, and his indulgence in formulae and in lengthy meth-
odological premises often obscures his train of thought. His work is not
very accessible: “Simiand is completely unreadable”, Pierre Chaunu assures
us.110 Yet despite these stylistic difficulties that try the reader’s patience,
the intent of Simiand’s work stands forth clearly. In the main body of his
writings, he was attempting to lay the basis for a positive economic science,
inspired by Durkheimian holism.
The path that François Simiand followed on his way to positive econom-
ics was fairly tortuous. He arrived at it through philosophy and sociology.
His association with Durkheim left an indelible imprint on his thinking. For
Simiand, economic facts were first and foremost social facts that impose
themselves as constraints on individuals.
Simiand’s work stands at the crossroads of history, economics, philoso-
phy and sociology, and it was among historians that Simiand found his
widest audience, particularly after 1930. This may seem paradoxical in light
of the virulent attacks that Simiand launched against certain traditional his-
torians at the beginning of the century, and even more so when we recall
that he defined himself from the outset as a sociologist and an economist.
In truth, he thought of himself as a sociologist who was practicing eco-
nomics. Yet Simiand was virtually ignored by the sociologists of his time,
a fate that persists today. His work is difficult to fathom, but that does not
fully explain its eclipse. From a strictly sociological viewpoint, his method
offered little that was new in comparison to Durkheim. But Simiand was
indeed a pioneer in attempting to transpose the principles of sociological
method to the analysis of economic history.
Simiand’s work, in fact, offers us the best proof that history occupied a
place of honor in Durkheimian sociology—and it does this in several ways.
First, through its method. From the first to the last of his works, Simiand
never proposed anything without solid references to historical materials.
For him, historical materials were in a sense a substitute for the experimen-
tation that is missing in the social sciences. History also allowed Simiand to
sketch out a theory of economic evolution. He analyzed by turn the main
120 The Durkheimian School and History
types of economies that have succeeded each other in the West since clas-
sical antiquity. Of course, to present the different forms of economies that
have left their mark on the history of modern societies is nothing new in
itself—indeed, the “political economy” textbooks of the time offered many
a synthesis of economic evolution. By contrast, to explain economics by
looking not for individual causes but for the collective causes that lurk
behind economic activity was a thoroughly new undertaking that aroused
a lively interest both among scientific historians, who were eager to break
with individualistic theses, and among sociologists.
The backbone of Simiand’s theoretical plan can be found to a large extent
in his writings on wages: there we find, for the first time, an interpretation
of economic history as a function of time. The economy, Simiand argues,
oscillates ceaselessly between two complementary movements: first comes
phase A, characterized by an upswing, and then phase B, characterized
by decline or stagnation. That fact, Simiand believes, makes it possible to
explain recent economic developments and to show that the great crisis of
1929 was not the result of fortuitous causes but an inevitable outcome of
the passage of time.
A writer in the polemical style, Simiand devoted much of his work to
discussing and criticizing theories that ran counter to positive economic sci-
ence. At the beginning of his career, he clashed first with historians and then
with economists.

Simiand and the Historical Science of His Time

Early in his life, even before he began to think of himself as an economist,
Simiand was interested in the progress of historical studies in France. In his
earliest works he attempts to specify the role, which he deems decisive, that
history must play in constituting a positive and experimental sociology. But
his methodological concept, inspired by Durkheim, set him in direct opposi-
tion to the historians of his time.

The Process of Narrative History

François Simiand had no sooner left the École Normale supérieure than
his byline began to appear in the most important French scholarly jour-
nals of the end of the 19th century. He gained notice first as a collabora-
tor with the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,111 in the role of editor
of its Année sociologique section, which until then had been in the hands
of another Durkheimian, the philosopher Paul Lapie, and was intended to
bring the principal works of sociology to the attention of the philosophical
community.112 In his first issue, in 1897, Simiand provides summaries of the
works of Worms, Giddings, Bernès and Durkheim. He also includes a cri-
tique of the Introduction aux études historiques published by Langlois and
Seignobos. That Simiand should write essays on the recent works of Worms,
 The Durkheimian School and History 121
Giddings, Bernès and Durkheim seems logical enough, for they were soci-
ologists of universal reputation. But for him to take an interest in the work
of Langlois and Seignobos, in the context of a section entitled the Année
sociologique, may at first appear odd. In fact, however, there is a ready
explanation—Simiand considered that sociology was impossible without
the help of the neighboring social sciences. The term “sociology”, he says,
“will be meaningful only on the condition that it is able to aggregate, orga-
nize and integrate under its umbrella all the efforts devoted to the scientific
and positive study of the life of people in society, wherever they come from,
and by whatever title they are known”.113 At this point, there is no doubt
that Simiand has already espoused the principles of Durkheim’s sociological
method. He is convinced that the field of sociology must embrace the entire
range of the positive social sciences. It is from the vantage point of this prin-
ciple that Simiand examines the work of Langlois and Seignobos.
The summary he published sparked much controversy. What is striking
in these authors’ book on method, he writes, “is a kind of distrust for the
terms, the notions and the questions commonly posed in the methodology
constructed by philosophers and sociologists”.114 He goes further: Langlois
and Seignobos are attempting to constitute a historical science that culti-
vates the individual, the particular fact, in all its forms. “A special discipline
may be needed here for gathering these individual and contingent facts [. . .]
given their quantity and the difficulty in locating them; but it cannot be
considered as the principal science itself”.115 Of course, it is history’s claim
to scientific status that Simiand is here denying. This attack by the young
representative of the Durkheimian school would not long lack for echoes.
In La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales (1901),
Charles Seignobos asserted the methodological supremacy of history over
the other social sciences and cast doubt on the very existence of social sci-
ences apart from statistics (which includes demography), economics and
the history of economic doctrines. A few months later, Henri Hauser in
his book L’Enseignement des sciences sociales rallied behind Seignobos and
took vigorous exception to the Durkheimian method, accusing it of being
too abstract.116
François Simiand, insisting on his right of reply, issued that response
in a famous essay of 1903, Méthode historique et science sociale d’après
les ouvrages récents de M. Lacombe et de M. Seignobos, published in the
recently launched Revue de synthèse historique. There, Paul Lacombe and
Charles Seignobos, who hold diametrically opposing views of history, are
in effect summoned to the witness box. Lacombe, who might be considered
as a sociologist, assigns to scientific history the study of general and insti-
tutional facts, while the second promotes the individual and the particular
fact. At first glance, as the subtitle of the article suggests, one might expect
Simiand to confront these two antithetical perspectives and, as he put it
himself, to “fix the essential points of the debate”117—but that is not the
case. The article does not analyze Lacombe’s work (which was by no means
122 The Durkheimian School and History
“recent”, having been published a decade earlier), confining itself to a few
words of praise and some passing references. Simiand instead focuses his
fire on the book of Seignobos, and also, indirectly, on that of Henri Hauser.
Each page constitutes a stiff lesson in method for historians. François
Simiand asserts at the outset that most historians have a mistaken concept
of science and that failing, he maintains, can be laid in part to the past
record of the historical discipline. History has long defined itself as a liter-
ary genre or a narrative. To study history in a scientific framework is thus a
relatively recent and still marginal concern among historians. The fact that
historians are novices when it comes to discussing methodological ques-
tions (a point that Charles Péguy would make virulently) explains the lack
of nuance in their statements and the absence of precision in the terms they
use. Thus, for Charles Seignobos “the social fact is psychological in nature,
and being psychological, it is subjective”.118 The first proposition is fair,
Simiand tells us: the social fact is a relationship of man to the objects of the
external world or a relationship of men among themselves with regard to
those objects. Simiand does not quite deny that there may be objective psy-
chological phenomena, but insists they can only be such when they depend
on a social factor.119 The second proposition must then be inaccurate: con-
trary to what Seignobos maintains, the terms “psychological” and “sub-
jective” cannot be treated as synonyms, as that would mean rejecting the
possibility of “constituting a social science in the sense of the already exist-
ing positive sciences, all of which work in an objective domain and exist
only on that condition”.120
The subjective and the objective must then be very carefully defined. The
subjective is internal to the individual, it relates to his values, his tastes,
his needs, his aptitudes: in short, it is everything that makes him unique
among his fellows. On the contrary, the objective is by definition something
external to the individual, such as a rule of law, a superstition, a dogma or
a religion. What is objective is constraining: “The results of positive science
are objective precisely because they arise in a manner independent of our
own action and of our thoughtful spontaneity; the regularities that science
reveals and expresses in the coexistence and the succession of phenomena
impose themselves upon us, they are not of our making, and that is why
they are of objective value”.121 An objective phenomenon is thus recognized
by its sui generis nature; it is independent of individual wills: “The whole is
something else, and it is more than the sum of its parts [. . .] The social ele-
ment, which occupies such a great place in our psychological life, is for us
a given that is independent of our individual spontaneity: it is reality, in the
same sense that what we call in positive knowledge the material element is
reality; it is object, as what we call the external world is object”.122
The concept of the social as an irreducible whole, which Simiand is vig-
orously defending here, is no different from that of Durkheim, not even
in its nuances. This definition of the social object, of course, raised ques-
tions among certain members of the historical community. Examined in this
 The Durkheimian School and History 123
light, the social becomes a pure abstraction; only the individual elements are
concrete realities, Seignobos argues. Simiand sees in this reasoning “an old
metaphysical illusion”. If we follow it to its logical conclusion, he notes with
his customary irony, we will have to consider the individual as an abstrac-
tion, since he is essentially a composite of organs: “Is this organic individual
nothing more than a joining of multiple organic elements, and is this so-
called independent reality in fact independent only in our mind and through
our abstraction, whether a common-sense abstraction or a scholarly abstrac-
tion? And do these cells, in turn, exist in themselves, separate from the ele-
ments that compose them, only through an operation of our mind, which is
again an abstraction?” This simple example is intended merely to show that
there is no solution to the conundrum posed by Seignobos. It tries to dem-
onstrate the fallacy of maintaining that the social is an abstraction simply
because it has the individual as its substrate. It is true, Simiand admits, that
the social has the individual as its substrate, but what is important for all of
science, as Durkheim showed, following Émile Boutroux, is not to deny its
substrate but rather not to reduce things to that level: “The social phenom-
enon is an abstraction, but it is no more and no less an abstraction than the
organic phenomenon, the chemical or physical phenomenon”.123
But science, François Simiand maintains, must look only for “first order”
abstractions or “felicitous abstractions”, abstractions that, in short, will
allow the researcher to establish regularities. To abstract is to theorize.
The theorization of social facts presupposes the establishment of gen-
eral facts that are linked to each other by relationships. Now, according to
Simiand, historians start from “one or several previous facts chosen without
a precise rule, by guesswork, by impression, by personal whim and, let us
admit, at random”.124 Moreover, they often resort to finalism. “In fact, this
tendency is quite dangerous. To explain the course of events by the motives
of men [. . .] by direct introspection and immediate inference, is nothing
more than to explain them by final causes, and this kind of explanation
should be banished from positive social science just as it is from other posi-
tive sciences”.125
In this case, how can history become scientific? As we have seen, Charles
Seignobos believed that the starting point of a scientific approach to his-
tory lay in the document. François Simiand finds both this solution and
this perspective to be false: “The document, that intermediary between the
investigating mind and the investigated fact, is far removed from scientific
observation: it is done without any defined method and for purposes that are
not scientific”.126 The scientific nature of history resides elsewhere: drawing
upon Bacon’s metaphor, Simiand maintains, in some famous passages, that
the historical discipline must, above all, do battle against “three idols” that
prevent the historian from gaining access to what is real: the political idol,
the individual idol and the chronological idol. These idols are the principal
cause of a great many errors. They deform reality—by favoring individual
facts, they give only an imperfect and confusing picture of human evolution.
124 The Durkheimian School and History
Scientific history must turn away from “unique facts in order to take up the
facts that repeat themselves”.127 In short, history will have to be sociologi-
cal, or it will not be scientific.

The Notion of Causation in History

Very early on, François Simiand proposed a causal explanation of social
phenomena, taking as his model the natural sciences: “Here as in the other
positive sciences, the cause of a phenomenon is, according to Mill’s formula,
nothing other than the antecedent on which that phenomenon is invariably
and unconditionally consequent. The causal link is established not between
an agent and an act, nor between a force and an outcome, but between two
phenomena of exactly the same order; it implies a stable relation, a regu-
larity, and a law. In the positive sense of the word, there can be no cause
except where there is a law, or at least a conceivable law. In this sense, we
see immediately that the individual phenomenon, unique of its kind, has no
cause, as it cannot be explained by a constant relationship with another phe-
nomenon and, in a given case, the invariable antecedents cannot be estab-
lished. If the study of human facts hopes to become a positive science, it
must turn away from unique facts and take up facts that repeat themselves,
that is to say it must discard the accidental to focus on the regular, elimi-
nate the individual to study the social”. The concept of causality borrowed
from Mill, which Simiand sets out here, stresses a relationship of invariable
succession between facts. The prior invariable phenomenon is the cause,
and the contingency is its effect. Now among historians, cause and effect
are frequently confused. Thus, Simiand remarks, Charles Seignobos, in his
Histoire politique de l’Europe contemporaire, concludes that the entire
political evolution of Europe in the 19th century can be explained on the
basis of just three great events: the revolutions of 1830 and of 1848 and the
war of 1871. And that is not all: Seignobos argues that these events were
the work of three “great men”: Charles X, Louis-Philippe and Bismarck.
In this explanation, which is not an explanation at all as Simiand sees it,
nothing flows from general causes because the author is content to establish
relationships between individual facts. The true causes are thus completely
overlooked, Simiand protests: “We notice the spark but we forget the explo-
sive force of the powder [. . .] In the effects of these ‘accidents’, we note [. . .]
facts of which the ‘accidental’ occurrence has very obviously been only the
occasional cause, facts that bear no truly causal relationship to that cause:
to indicate the occasional cause of a fact is by no means to explain it”.129
Of course, this complaint was aimed not only at Seignobos but at the
entire community of historians, and François Simiand pursued his campaign
against “narrative history” far beyond the pages of the Revue de synthèse
historique. We find some echoes, for example, in the Notes critiques at
the turn of the century, but the developments are too cursory to teach us
much. In 1906, in a communication to the Société française de philosophie,
 The Durkheimian School and History 125
Simiand compiles the essentials of his views on causality in history. There
we find little new beyond the 1903 article, except perhaps that he praises the
German theoretician Bernstein for having shown the possibility of develop-
ing causal relationships in the social sciences analogous to those that are
established in the natural sciences. Then he comes back to the book of
Seignobos, Histoire politique de l’Europe contemporaine. And after a final
analysis, he poses this question: “Can we find true causes?”130 His answer
is: no, not in the scientific meaning of the word.
Simiand then abruptly offers a lesson in method. Rules are prescribed for
historians: “Define in general terms the precise effect proposed for expla-
nation”; “distinguish between cause and condition”; “always explain the
immediate antecedent”; “try at all times to establish explanatory proposi-
tions for which the reciprocal is true”.131 These rules, short and pithy, are
recalled again and again in Simiand’s reviews of historical works.

The Principles of the Positive Method

By 1907–1908, Simiand had delivered the bulk of his scientific message to
the historical community. Henceforth, his main concern would be to con-
struct a positive method for the science of economics, as illustrated in the
many works he published on the subject in the Année sociologique.132
This method, we must specify, was developed to counter the lead-
ing tendencies in the political economy of the time;133 it was opposed to
what Simiand called “finalistic economics” and “conceptual economics”.
Inspired by Durkheim’s method, Simiand considered that economics must
become experimental.134 However, and this comes out particularly in his
last works, Simiand differed from Durkheim and many of the Durkheimians
on one very specific aspect: he refused to explain advanced economic forms
by reference to primitive or elementary forms.

Critique of Traditional Political Economy

In 1912, in La Méthode positive en science économique, his handbook on
“methodological warfare” as Célestin Bouglé rightly dubbed it,135 François
Simiand gives this definition of economics: “The objective of economic sci-
ence is to understand and explain economic reality”.136 The key word, the
dominant word here is “reality”, for it obviously implies a quest for objectiv-
ity. The economist must explain economic reality as it is, without judgment,
without preconceptions, objectively, like things. For that reason, positive
economic science must adopt the principles of the sociological method. “It
is by that route”, Simiand declares, “that we can truly interpret the facts
as they have occurred, as they unfold in actual reality”. In another work,
Simiand attempts to apply this principle to the problem of wages. We must
approach wages, he says, by establishing “a list of elements and factors to
be examined that is as independent as possible of any preconceived idea and
126 The Durkheimian School and History
of any conscious or unconscious theory”.137 For “a theory of positive sci-
ence is constituted by the causal explanation, in the form of a law, of a phe-
nomenon or a category of phenomena; it is not the ideal determination of
a certain hypothetical system of relationships between elements conceived
by the mind”.138
François Simiand’s intent was to take sociology, economic history and
social history and transpose them into the study of economics. In this plan,
he was setting himself squarely against the classical political economy
method, with its emphasis on a rational homo œconomicus looking out for
his own interests. Working in isolation, on the fringes of the community of
economists, Simiand battled ceaselessly against those economic systems that
defined themselves in contrast to positive economic sociology.139
From the very first works he published in the Année sociologique,
François Simiand took issue with finalistic or applied economics, the basic
objective of which, he said, was to identify concrete solutions in order to
remedy the problems facing modern economies. History is rife, he argued,
with examples to show that, whenever people saw their interests or aspi-
rations at stake, they attempted to apply solutions “to achieve desired or
conceived ends” before ever studying and acquiring a “pure and simple
understanding of reality itself”. Thus, “not only did the healer precede the
physician, but the physician himself preceded, and to a large extent still pre-
cedes, the physiologist; and even now, when physiology and scientific medi-
cine have been constituted and authorized, we still have healers”.140 This
method, far from being scientific, does not establish any relationships of
cause and effect. Finalistic economics is concerned above all with trying to
change the course of the events it studies. This concern is clear in the treat-
ment that some economists give to economic crises: “The ills occasioned
by crises impinge upon minds from the outset so strongly that the strictly
scientific viewpoint is typically lost or neglected immediately. The study of
the phenomenon or of its causes at once takes on the character of applied
scientific research, and not of science as such; it is constantly concerned with
finding remedies, before or in any case during observation of the case”.141
It is not that Simiand wants in this youthful text to deny positive econom-
ics the right to offer solutions to contemporary economic problems, but he
wants this to be done at the last stage, after the evil has been first rigorously
diagnosed and explained. Otherwise, he insists, we are not explaining, we
are constructing “an economic ideal”.142
The conceptual economic method is just as defective: “By conceptual
economics, we mean that manner of treating the object of economic sci-
ence according to which we study and analyze that object using ideas that
the economist has constructed or accepted in his mind, and where we
account for what is happening or what could happen through the ideologi-
cal formulation of relationships and explanations that appear to the mind
as acceptable and satisfactory”.143 Proponents of this type of explanation
often invoke the mechanism of supply and demand as a factor explaining
 The Durkheimian School and History 127
economic life. But this theory must be rejected, according to Simiand, for it
serves only to explain the change in a price, and not the process by which
that price was formed.144 “The essence of an economic explanation using
supply and demand is that, assuming a free market and things or services
offered for sale on that market, the relative economic values for those things
or services will be determined in inverse relationship to the physical quanti-
ties that are, respectively, offered and demanded in trade”. Simiand main-
tains that in a positive study of wages, this principle cannot be applied:
“Since at all times there are the unemployed, and hence the supply of labor
exceeds the demand for it, how is it that wages are not steadily falling?”145
Clearly, in the two examples cited, it is “reality” that escapes the econo-
mist. Finalistic economics merely proposes an economic ideal, and concep-
tual economics is a purely ideological construct.
In the early 1930s, François Simiand is still a trenchant debater, always
eager to do battle over method. Now he is debunking economic science
as he had discredited history at the beginning of the century, but this time
his reasons are diametrically opposed. While he had reproached histori-
ans for stringing out a series of facts without any thought to theory, he
now upbraids economists for stringing out theories without any empirical
foundation. In all his work, Simiand promotes dialogue between facts and
theory. In an article in the Année sociologique of 1904, Simiand had writ-
ten: “To combine a concern for theory with investigation of the facts is
surely the essential principle of a truly positive scholarship”.146 In 1932, in
the introduction to his important study of wages, he returns to the charge:
“This essay argues both against theories without facts [. . .] and against
studies of facts without theories”.147 As Simiand sees it, we must avoid the
twin pitfalls of retreating into empiricism and engaging in purely theoretical
speculation. And those traps can only be avoided if economics becomes an
experimental science.

The Problem of “The Search for Origins”

In science, the invariable prior phenomenon serves as cause. In this sense,
Simiand maintains, looking for the cause of a phenomenon does not mean
that we have to go all the way back to its embryonic state.
The study of primitive societies occupies a prominent place in the works
of the Durkheimian school.148 It is by studying the simplest, most elemen-
tary phenomena, they believed, that we come to understand more complex
phenomena. In 1903, in a youthful essay, Simiand had subscribed to this
methodological approach wholeheartedly: “It would be very important for
the establishment of a positive economic science and for a better under-
standing of complex economies, of advanced developments and of obscure
holdovers, if the economy of primitive societies were better known and sci-
entifically analyzed”.149 Nowhere in Simiand’s later works do we find a
statement of this nature. What happened was that, little by little, he changed
128 The Durkheimian School and History
his ideas about the usefulness of “looking for origins”. Indeed, 30 years
later, in Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, he reaches a quite dif-
ferent, in fact diametrically opposed, conclusion to the one he offered in the
pages of the Année sociologique at the beginning of the century. This time,
he no longer sees the need to explain the complex by the elementary, at least
when it comes to economic phenomena: “In studying a phenomenon or a
set of phenomena that have developed historically or organically, we are
more likely to arrive at accessible and reliable explanations if we examine
the fully formed state rather than the nascent one, the adult state rather than
the embryonic one”.150 In asserting this, Simiand is arguing that we cannot
go directly to the origins, because the object is always, consciously or not,
considered in some phase of its development. “It is quite hopeless to try
to begin a study at the original embryonic state: we can only understand a
beginning, an infancy, if we have first appreciated the full development or
the adult state, and if we were to pursue this precept, we could show that
science has never proceeded in any other way”.151 In fact, Simiand says, to
look for origins is to place great store by contingency. For, he explains, there
is no causal filiation that can prove beyond doubt that a fact, considered
in its primitive state, is the source of a given institution. We cannot explain
social phenomena, then, by tracing their successive states.
In Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie dealing with wages, money
and social evolution, Simiand goes further: he urges sociologists to leave
aside “the superstition of the study of origins”.152 He calls instead for seek-
ing the immediate, or the least “substitutable”, antecedent of a phenomenon:
“In any study, whether of a category of phenomena, or a group of phenom-
ena, or a single phenomenon, we are more likely to arrive readily and quickly
at conclusive results if, within the proposed field, we begin by studying the
clearest, the simplest part”. What does he mean by that? As Simiand sees
things, it is difficult, if not impossible, when looking at primitive societies, to
distinguish an economic fact itself from certain categories of facts (technical,
material or other). In primitive societies, “economic life [. . .] has no separate
existence, it is permeated by religious and ethnic elements and beliefs, by
extra-economic practices, that are intimately bound up with it”. Simiand thus
arrives at the conclusion that, since the autonomy of the economic sphere is
relatively recent in human evolution, the modern economy must be analyzed
in its own right (without any reference to the primitive world), for nowhere
else “does economic life appear more autonomous, more detached from all
other elements, more independent of everything else in social life”.153
In this way, Simiand takes issue with the comparative method. Since the eco-
nomic sphere is specific, he argues, we must avoid comparing it to other kinds
of phenomena, and religious phenomena in particular. Does this mean that the
comparative method is obsolete from a scientific viewpoint? If the comparative
method has allowed sociology to free itself from individualistic explanation,
Simiand believes—curiously, at first glance—that its task is fulfilled. In fact,
he thinks that the comparative method can be applied only imperfectly to the
 The Durkheimian School and History 129
study of economic facts. “In our economic affairs, especially [. . .] we can dem-
onstrate that comparative study is only a second-best”.154
We might be surprised to hear this critique of the comparative method
coming from a Durkheimian, but there is an explanation: in effect, if we
follow Simiand’s reasoning to its end, the comparative method, by gather-
ing facts from different societies, serves merely to confirm coexistence, and
it does not fulfill the essential condition of a science. It is better, then, to
examine the movement of a fact—in other words, to explain the fact as it
develops (se produisant).
Neither the comparative method nor the search for origins, then, can
make economics into a science.

An Experimental Method
We have dwelt at length on Simiand’s idea that the methods of the natural
sciences can be applied to the social sciences.155 By the 1920s, Simiand was
arguing that economic science must adopt the principles of the experimental
method, the power of which had been proven in the natural sciences: biol-
ogy, chemistry, physics. However, there would be some problems associated
with applying the experimental method to the social sciences.
In the natural sciences, in observing the facts (often in a laboratory), the
experimenter is working directly with his object, which means that he is
able to conduct multiple experiments. He can also reproduce phenomena
before his eyes. Obviously, however, the social sciences do not enjoy this
methodological advantage.
The problem in developing a positive economic science, Simiand thinks,
is to recreate the conditions that will allow the type of experimentation
used in the natural sciences. To this end, history and statistics have valuable
contributions to make.

THE FUNCTION OF HISTORY AND STATISTICS

Generally speaking, economists work with facts that are known to them
only indirectly. In fact, the method of positive economic science is necessar-
ily historical. “This means that positive economic study is condemned to
rely essentially on documents, on facts that have been recorded or reported,
seldom with any scientific purpose and never by scholars (or their repre-
sentatives) seeking only the truth”.156 Consequently, the economist, like
the historian, must undertake a critical examination of sources to deter-
mine whether they are consistent with reality. Simiand calls this operation
“the critique of accuracy”, and it involves both an external critique and an
internal critique. The external critique consists of verifying the origin, the
authenticity and the circumstances of publication of a document, while the
internal critique has to do with understanding the meaning of the document
in regard to its author and the context in which it was written.
130 The Durkheimian School and History
Like Durkheim, Simiand was convinced that the historical method is
of great heuristic value. “Positive economic research can benefit much
from the practices tested and validated by history” in terms of discovering
“through documents the facts that escape experimentation in the labora-
tory”.157 History in itself is not experimental in the meaning given that
word by Claude Bernard. It is merely a science of observation; it confines
itself to identifying a body of facts in their raw state. Experimentation
requires the scholar to compare the facts, to question them and to ver-
ify them against each other. The historical method cannot go beyond the
observation stage.
It is here that statistics comes into play. “Economic history, as we see it,
has to be complemented by economic statistics, and vice versa. And this
doubly desirable link can only be made effective and useful if it does not rely
on economic empiricism but becomes systematic research conducted accord-
ing to the needs and aspirations of a true positive science in this area”.158
In Statistique et expérience, Simiand states the usefulness of statistics
very clearly: it serves “to allow the human mind to make a relatively sim-
ple representation of complex groupings of facts, to appreciate the value
of those simplified representations, to study and recognize whether they
are interrelated, and on what basis, and to what degree those relations are
established”.159
In fact, the sociologist or the economist proceeds no differently from the
botanist who breaks down a phenomenon into its component parts and
examines the action of each factor on each part. “When we study the char-
acteristics of a species or a breed, what are we doing? We are trying to
identify the traits that clearly characterize all the individuals of that species
or that breed, even if they are not all necessarily to be found in any one indi-
vidual”.160 The fact that statistics seeks to establish averages is, according to
Simiand, additional proof of its experimental nature.
Not only does statistics organize the facts, it also offers an objective ana-
lytical technique. In this respect, it is a perfect complement of historical
analysis.161 Thus, history and statistics bear the same relationship to each
other as do observation and experimentation.

A Theory of Economic Progress

At the beginning of the 1930s, economic history was in great vogue in
France. The works of Henri Hausser and Ernest Labrousse paved the way to
this new field of history. Clearly, the context of the day did much to encour-
age this enthusiasm for the study of economic problems. “Economic history
responds to falling world prices by undertaking a thorough examination of
price swings; it responds to the crisis of 1929 by examining the general issue
of crises and fluctuations”, says Pierre Chaunu.162 Was economic history
born of the problems linked to the 1929 crash? In fact, it emerged much
earlier, although the crisis did much to develop it. We can already see in
 The Durkheimian School and History 131
Simiand’s work, from the end of the 19th century, the first indicators of a
long-term economic history.

The Sociological Foundations of Economic Evolution

In the 1930s, François Simiand’s theory of economic progress finally took
on its definitive form. Simiand sketched a theory of economic progress that,
on many points, diverged radically from that of his contemporary econo-
mists. He identified two broad alternating and contrasting phases in eco-
nomic evolution: a phase of progress, which he called phase A, and a phase
of depression or stagnation, which he called phase B.
In order to understand the key linkages in Simiand’s theory of economic
progress we must first take as our guide his three-volume Cours d’économie
politique (1929–1932). Of all Simiand’s works, this is the one that had the
greatest influence on the historical community. It can in fact be regarded as
a fine example of economic and social history. In it, Simiand addresses eco-
nomics both as a historian and as a sociologist. As a historian, he consults
sources, reviews historiography, traces developments. As a sociologist, he
relates economic facts to general principles and proposes a positive interpre-
tation of economic evolution.
Like all of Simiand’s work, much of this course of political economy is
devoted to a review of the literature. Economists, Simiand remarks, generally
distinguish three types of economies, corresponding to specific moments in
history: 1, the closed economy; 2, the simple exchange economy; and 3, the
complex exchange economy. In its general principle, Simiand is prepared to
accept this conventional classification and he uses it in his own works, albeit
with some amendments. At the outset, he identifies two problems: 1, can
we consider these economic types as closed units, isolated from each other?
and 2, does this classification follow an irreversible historical order? In both
cases, Simiand responds in the negative: “Rarely do we find a completely
closed economy, and the first two types are often linked, at least to some
degree”. More specifically, he proposes: “Let us juxtapose upon this tripar-
tite classification a grouping that links type I and type II-A (simple barter) in
what we shall call the barter economy, and another grouping that links type
II-B (simple monetary exchange) and type III (complex exchange economy)
in what we shall call the monetary or credit economy”.163 Simiand clearly
does not deny the legitimacy of a theory of economic progress, but as he
sees it the complexity and the progressive diversity of the economy does not
follow a straight line. Economic evolution, he insists, is composed jointly of
forward and backward movements. There is, then, no “unique and irrevers-
ible succession”. This vision of economic progress, consisting of alternat-
ing movements, was in full gestation in Simiand’s earliest works. Thus, he
writes in the Année sociologique of 1899, “we must not believe that the
subsequent form will totally eliminate the previous form. The various suc-
cessive modes appear and coexist before our eyes”.164
132 The Durkheimian School and History
According to Robert Marjolin, Simiand’s grand plan is to distill sociolog-
ical laws from economic evolution.165 As a good Durkheimian, he explains
the economy through social forms. Thus, the closed economy, which we
find at various moments in history, flows directly from a segmented social
structure where the members are intimately bound to each other. In this type
of society, as Durkheim had shown, the collective consciousness is strong,
and the law is repressive. “Very generally”, Simiand notes, “what dominates
life in primitive society is a set of prescriptions that, we might say, apply
to its entire life and all its activities. Collective life, which is considerable
[. . .] is made up of positive rules and of negative rules or taboos”.166 Thus,
in primitive society, there is little division of labor, exchange is rare, and
money is nonexistent. This weak economic organization, in Simiand’s view,
is largely attributable to a rudimentary social life.
The simple exchange economy is the result of more complex social rela-
tions. The civilization of the high Middle Ages offers a good example of the
simple exchange economy. While in some respects it was archaic, it never-
theless contained certain characteristics that heralded the modern economy.
Initially, trade was confined to the village or the manor, but little by little
products began to make their way in from beyond. It was the mobility of
traders that drove the expansion of economic frontiers. In the villages, there
was a division of tasks among individuals. While the majority remained
on the land, some turned increasingly to trade. The mass arrival of new
products from the New World opened up a host of new activities. The city
became a market place. Gradually—and this is important—trading came to
be conducted in money. The division of labor, however, remained elemen-
tary, and trading was still confined within the city walls.167
The complex exchange economy—or the capitalist economy—appeared
in the 16th century, and it owed its existence, Simiand insists, not to politi-
cal events, such as religious reformations, but rather to rising prices.168 Far
from depressing commerce, rising prices boosted it. “What does it matter to
the merchant if prices go up, if he is able, on his first sale, to turn a profit
(even higher than expected) on something that he bought at a lower price
and can sell at a higher price, and then on a second sale, even though he has
to pay more for something, he can sell it at an even higher price?”169 The
terms of trade were changing, thanks in large part to the sharp increase in the
volume of precious metals, sparked by new overseas discoveries. Personal
fortunes multiplied, and money became the symbol of wealth. How, then,
can we explain rising prices? Simiand maintains that they are a direct result
of the accumulation of monetary means: “What made the general environ-
ment favorable to economic development in the 19th and 20th centuries
was not the constitution of the economic system itself, nor economic free-
dom, nor technical transformations, nor capitalism, nor socialism—it was
the discovery and exploitation of gold mines in California, and then in the
Transvaal and the Klondike”.170 Simiand’s demonstration, as Raymond
Aron has pointed out, may seem ambiguous at first glance.171 Must we, in
 The Durkheimian School and History 133
this case, reduce monetary fluctuations to chance and contingency? Simiand
foresaw this objection, and he responded with a sociological argument: “We
simply need to integrate the accident of gold mine discoveries into a more
general formulation of social monetarism”.172

Evolution and the Functioning of the Economy

In the 1930s especially, Simiand was urging economists to look beyond
cyclical phenomena and to think about the process of continuity. To those
who were rushing to offer solutions to economic imbalances, he insisted
that this was the best way to understand the great economic crisis of 1929.
In 1932, Simiand wrote an essay, Les Fluctuations économiques à longue
période et la crise mondiale, that clearly bore the marks of his time. In it,
he offered a long-term perspective on the great economic depression afflict-
ing Western economies. He was certain that history could offer a means for
understanding the phases of growth and stagnation in economic activity. To
be sure, he was not looking to history for moral lessons or for solutions to
the crisis: that would merely demonstrate an attachment to finalism, some-
thing he had vigorously denounced throughout his career.
His presentation is based on two hypotheses: the first is that “long-term
economic fluctuations have been an important, even central feature of mod-
ern and contemporary economic development, since the end of the 18th
century and very probably since the 16th century; the second is that the cur-
rent world crisis is not merely a turning point between the expansionary and
recessionary phases of those shorter cycles that last for perhaps a decade or
less, with which we are familiar, but is in fact a turning point between two
phases of one of those long-term fluctuations that run for decades or for
half a century”.173
This analytical framework gives no place to the particular cyclical stage
of an economic crisis, nor to individualistic determination. Each crisis,
Simiand tells us, has its own causes and effects, but it is not these particular
issues that are of interest to science; it is the general traits that we find in
every period of economic crisis. History helps to make it clear that a crisis,
however unique it may appear, is not a spontaneous event but one that has
been in preparation for a long time.
In this way, Simiand outlines a law of economic development. That
law starts with the general movement of prices and monetary fluctuations
and is characterized by two alternating phases, A and B, which Simiand
had already explained in his work on wages. Phase A indicates an upward
price movement and is positive; phase B represents a downward movement
or stagnation and is therefore negative. Simiand finds that these phases,
stretching out over a cycle of several decades, have come in relentless suc-
cession since the 16th century. Generally speaking, the upswings occurred
(in reverse order) in the periods from the end of the 19th century to the
Great War, from the middle of the 19th century to the years 1875–1880,
134 The Durkheimian School and History
from before 1789 until 1810–1815 and, finally, from the 16th century to
the middle of the 17th. The B phases, for their part, filled the gaps between
the periods mentioned.
Since the beginning of the modern era, however, Western economies have
been in constant fluctuation, although with a rising trend. François Simiand
asks if the crisis of the 1930s might mean the end of an A-phase period:
“Are we at a turning point in a long-term economic fluctuation?” “Can we
see in these years an indication of a move from phase A to phase B?”174 As
a good economic historian, Simiand recognizes several signs from past years
that foreshadowed the crisis. The causes of the crisis are to be sought, he
says, not in the preceding months, but all the way back to the last quarter
of the 19th century, in the years 1875–1880 and 1895 to 1900, when there
was a detectable downward shift in the long-term movement.
This alternating pattern, which here is irreversible, is not specific to the
economic world: nature is subject to analogous laws. “Plant growth occurs
in alternating phases, not only in temperate climes but even in climates
where the temperature varies less. In the animal kingdom, many functions
that are essential to life reveal alternations (the circulation of the blood,
respiration, periods of sleep and wakefulness, etc.). All these orders of facts
seem to show that where there is life there is a succession of expansions and
of stoppages or compressions, an alternation of contrary phases”.175
Following this line of reasoning, then, it would be wrong to consider
crises as pathological symptoms. The crisis is simply a temporary malaise.
Yet economists, Simiand complains, regard economic crises as pathologies:
rather than analyze the true causes, they insist on looking for cures. Now
before we look for remedies, for solutions, we must first “learn to under-
stand properly”.176 To understand is to grasp the laws governing the his-
torical development of a phenomenon. An economic crisis, even if it seems
unique and fortuitous, can only be explained by situating it within a long-
term pattern. Thus, to analyze the crisis of the 1930s, we must first consult
the past. “If it is true that the world economy has today entered phase B of
a long-term fluctuation, then we must expect it to play itself out in the man-
ner characteristic of previous B phases”.177 That is to say, we must expect
strikes, conflicts and social unrest of various kinds.
Can we speed the crisis to its conclusion? That question was frequently
posed, but it was of no interest to Simiand. As he saw it, the primary
task of science is to explain; it is not necessarily to provide solutions to
the phenomena it studies. “We have not found a panacea for the present
situation, for the simple reason that it does not exist”.178 We must “make
the best of this necessary evil”.179 If there is no panacea, it is because the
alternation of phases A and B is an ineluctable pattern of history. “We
have no reason to call phase A either more or less pathological than phase
B, or [to apply that epithet to] the transition from one to the other. Each
part of this process is just as regular, just as normal as the other”.180 In
short, Simiand concludes, the combination of these two phases is the key
 The Durkheimian School and History 135
characteristic of economic progress—phases A and B are like “successive
reaches of a waterway”.181
It is easy to understand why economists never regarded Simiand as one of
their own. His profound aversion to homo œconomicus, his holistic method,
his concept of system, all served to distance him from conventional political
economy. In fact, his contribution to economics is still considered meager.
Nor in sociology were his methodological developments very illuminating,
compared to those of Durkheim. Simiand’s work, for obvious reasons, reso-
nates essentially within the community of historians.182
Like Durkheim, whose methodological imperialism he fully espoused,
François Simiand considered that sociological research must be preceded
by detailed historical analysis, and when he turned (with contempt) to the
work of historians of the early 20th century, it was first of all to lay the basis
of a new historical science that could collaborate in developing the newborn
sociology. In his late-career works on price movements and wages, Simiand
pointed a path forward for historians anxious to renew their discipline. He
himself designed the architecture of a historical sociology that comprised
at once an analysis of human action and a long-term vision of historical
development.

A Theory of Collective Memory: Maurice Halbwachs

Like his friend and mentor François Simiand, Maurice Halbwachs (1877–
1945) attached great importance to questions of method. When he joined
the Durkheimian group in 1905, he was already intrigued by quantitative
techniques. But in the development of his thought, history did not hold
as important a place as it did with Simiand or with Bouglé, or even with
Durkheim. For Halbwachs, history was but one auxiliary science among
others. In fact, many of his works contain scarcely any reference to history.
We may say that his analysis of the working class—and of social classes
in general—is essentially static. In the introduction to La Classe ouvrière et
les niveaux de vie, he writes, “the working class, we believe, resembles more
closely a mechanical and inert mass than a living and supple organism”.
Consequently, “it is first and foremost in the present, and not in history,
that we must study the working class, for of all portions of society it is the
one that feels the least influence and impetus from its past”.183 In fact, there
is nothing unusual about the methodological perspective of this piece, and
this rejection of history in favor of synchronic analysis appears frequently in
Halbwachs’s works. Thus, his writings on social morphology or on suicide
do not make any particular reference to history.
It is true that Maurice Halbwachs was often critical of historical science
and some of its representatives, but, like Simiand, it was only with events-
based or narrative history that he did battle. Halbwachs took a lively interest
in the new history that was developing at the beginning of the 1930s under
the leadership of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, with whom he maintained
136 The Durkheimian School and History
close and happy relations, and he was from the outset a member of the edi-
torial board of the Annales.
The hallmark and the dominant feature of Halbwachs’s varied work,
although he came to this concern relatively late, is surely his sociology of the
memory, inspired both by Émile Durkheim and by Henri Bergson.
To remember is a collective affair, for it is through the collective memory
that individual memories acquire their deeper meaning. However, memory
is not history. Halbwachs contrasts the two: history, the science of history,
merely recounts sequences of events and ruptures; collective memory insists
on continuity.

The Sociology of Memory

Maurice Halbwachs was concerned with the sociology of memory as early
as the 1920s.184
Man has a memory. He represents to himself the image of things or events
seemingly past. He finds in them similarities with events that he remembers
or that he knows about from others. Knowledge of the past guides him in
his actions, in his decisions. The primary function of memory is to reach into
the confused mass of experience and draw from it certain events that will
then be sheltered from the passage of time. And this function, Halbwachs
tells us, responds not only to individual but also to collective needs.185
For Maurice Halbwachs, in fact, memory is a collective representation
in the full meaning of that term.186 For it contributes, just as does religion
for example, to forging the bonds of solidarity between individuals. Thus,
the individual remembers by placing himself in the perspective of the group.
“We can remember only on condition of retrieving the position of past
events that interest us from the frameworks of collective memory. A recol-
lection is the richer when it reappears at the junction of a greater number of
these frameworks, which in effect intersect each other and overlap in part.
Forgetting is explained by the disappearance of these frameworks or of a
part on them, either because our attention is no longer able to focus on them
or because it is focused somewhere else [. . .] But forgetting, or the deforma-
tion of certain recollections, is also explained by the fact that these frame-
works change from one period to another”.187 As a loyal Durkheimian,
Halbwachs maintains that it is the collective memory that gives meaning to
the many individual memories: “To call up his own past, a man often needs
to appeal to the memories of others. He looks to points of reference that
exist beyond him, and that are fixed by society. What is more, it is impossi-
ble for the individual memory to function without these instruments, which
are words and ideas that the individual has not invented, but has borrowed
from his milieu”.188
In other words, collective memory and the individual memory are mutu-
ally dependent. The collective memory is external, true, but the individ-
ual gradually internalizes it over the course of his life. When he recalls a
 The Durkheimian School and History 137
memory, the individual is often led to wonder whether he really experienced
some fact or whether it was told to him. And this is so because at each
moment, society possesses the necessary means to reproduce memories.
But the collective memory is not innate to the individual consciousness:
the individual acquires it little by little. It is the links that he forges with his
social environment that allow him to appropriate it. “As soon as a child
moves beyond the purely sensual phase of life, as soon as it is interested
in the meaning of the images and pictures it perceives, we may say that
it thinks in common with others, and that its thinking is divided between
the stream of quite personal impressions and diverse currents of collective
thought”.189 Memory is reconstituted, in large part, with the help of society.
“What survives is not ready-made images, stored away in some subterra-
nean gallery of our thought—rather, we find in society all the indications
needed to reconstruct those parts of our past that we recall only partially
or indistinctly, or that we believe completely gone from our memory”.190
Thus it is that society’s memory—other people’s memory—reinforces and
completes the individual memory.
The events that a nation has lived through, and that have had the effect of
modifying its institutions or traditions, belong to the individual, even if he
has not experienced them himself. “Through one portion of my personality
I am part of the group, so that nothing that happens there, as long as I am
a member of it, and indeed nothing that has concerned and transformed it
before I joined it, is completely foreign to me”.191 In other words, history
as we have experienced it is bound up with history in general. The link
between the individual memory and the collective memory is guaranteed by
a multitude of recollections that we might call intermediary. The individual
belongs to several groups at once, and each of those groups fashions its
own memory, in greater or lesser depth. In the end, each social class has its
own memory. But the smaller the group, the stronger will be the individual’s
sense of belonging, and consequently, it will be easier for individuals “to
remember in common”.192
In his unfinished book, La Mémoire collective, Halbwachs distinguishes
two kinds of memories: one is internal, personal, autobiographical; the
other is external, social, historical. And he shows at the outset that the col-
lective or social memory is broader and denser than the individual memory.
“The first (the personal memory) will draw from the second (the collective
memory), for after all the history of our own life is part of general his-
tory. But the second will naturally be much more extensive than the first”.
Halbwachs goes on to specify: “If it is understood that we know our per-
sonal memory only from within, and the collective memory from without,
there will in fact be a sharp contrast between the two. I remember Reims
because I lived there for a whole year. I also remember that Joan of Arc was
in Reims and that Charles VII was crowned there, because I have heard it
said or I have read it. Joan of Arc has been so often presented in the theater,
in the cinema and so on, that I have no problem imagining her in Reims. At
138 The Durkheimian School and History
the same time, I know very well that I could never have witnessed the event
itself, and so I am limited here to the words that I have read or heard, the
signs that have been reproduced over time, which are all that comes down
to me from that past”.193 To speak of the collective memory is also to speak
of oneself, and Halbwachs constantly situates his own memory within the
grand collective whole.

Memory and History

If Maurice Halbwachs gives such primacy to memory, it is mainly because
it has an invaluable social function: it serves to establish the bonds between
generations. “A child has the vague feeling that, upon entering the house of
its grandfather, upon arriving in his neighborhood or in the city where he
lives, it has penetrated into a different region, which however is not foreign
to the child because it coincides too well with the image and the lifestyle of
the oldest members of the child’s family”.194 Contrary to historical science,
which is interested only in heterogeneous events, the memory is a “living
history”. Thus, Halbwachs adds this essential nuance: “History is not all
the past, but nor is it all that remains of the past. Or, if you will, in addition
to a written history there is a living history that is perpetuated or renewed
over time and where we can retrieve a great number of these old currents
that only seem to have disappeared”.195 It is tradition, rather than history
books, that keeps history alive.
The difference between the collective memory and history, then, is clear.
“History is surely the gathering of facts that have occupied the greatest
space in the memory of men. But past events, as read in books, as taught
and learned in school, are selected, compared and classified, according to
necessities or rules that do not impose themselves on the circles of men who
have long safeguarded the living heritage. In general, history begins only
where tradition leaves off, at which time the social memory is either extin-
guished or breaks down. As long as a memory survives, it is useless to set it
down in writing, or even to fix it purely and simply”. Despite their apparent
antithesis, memory and history are in fact complementary: history takes
over from memory when the latter fades. History, then, has a central role to
play: it allows us to preserve our collective memories against the ravages of
time, it provides intergenerational linkages. “Of course, one of the objects
of history may be precisely to build a bridge back to the past and to restore
this interrupted continuity”.196
But is history up to this task? Rarely. And that is why Halbwachs consid-
ers that the collective memory differs from history in at least two respects:
“It is a steady current of thought, a continuity about which there is nothing
artificial, since it retains from the past only that which is still alive or capable
of living in the consciousness of the group that entertains it. By definition, it
does not go beyond the bounds of the group”.197 In this sense, history is much
broader than collective memory: “History”, Halbwachs writes, “divides the
 The Durkheimian School and History 139
sequence of centuries into periods, as we might distribute the plot of a trag-
edy among several acts. But whereas in a play, from one act to the next, it
is the same action that is pursued, with the same players, who remain to the
end consistent in their character, and whose feelings and passions progress
with uninterrupted momentum, in history we have the impression that, from
one period to the next, everything—the interests at stake, the direction of
minds, ways of understanding men and events, traditions and outlooks for
the future—everything starts anew, and if the same groups seem to reappear,
it is because the external divisions, which result from places, from names and
also from the general nature of societies, survive”.198
Thus, history divides and contrasts periods against each other in a radical
manner, and this contrasting, as we know, generally focuses on the event.
But, Halbwachs maintains, that is a great source of error: “It is possible that
on the day after an event that has shaken or in part destroyed or reshaped
the structure of a society, another period begins. But we perceive that only
later, when a new society, in fact, will have drawn from itself new resources
and will have set for itself new goals”.199 In fact, even when there seems to
be a rupture, it is never complete; the collective memory does not start again
from scratch but pursues its path, despite the obstacles it encounters.
There are of course several collective memories, Halbwachs tells us, just
as there are several histories. However, in collective memories a unique
phenomenon occurs: it is not the differences that stand out, but rather the
resemblances, the similarities. “The group, when it comes to envision its
past, senses clearly that it has remained the same and it becomes aware of its
identity over time. History [. . .] tends to discard those intervals where noth-
ing seems to happen, or where life simply repeats itself, perhaps in slightly
different forms but without any essential alteration, without any rupture
or upheaval. But the group, which lives first and foremost for itself, seeks
to perpetuate the sentiments and the images that form the substance of its
thought”. According to Halbwachs, the collective memory stresses continu-
ity: “it is a portrait of things permanent”, while history consists primarily
of changes—“history is a portrait of changes”.200 To perceive the changes,
history must embrace long periods of time, while the collective memory
rarely extends beyond the human lifespan—it covers one or two generations
at most: “Perhaps we have come to a point of view that is not and cannot
be that of the historians. We criticize them for lumping together in time
national and local histories each of which represents a distinct line of evo-
lution. However, if we succeed in presenting to ourselves a synchronic pic-
ture where all events, wherever they occur, are brought together, it is surely
because we detach them from the settings of their own time, that is to say we
abstract them from the real time to which they belonged. There is a current
opinion that history, on the contrary, focuses perhaps too exclusively on the
chronological succession of facts”.201
In short, history does not see the slow mutations; it “overlooks those
intervals in which nothing seems to happen”, it sees only ruptures and
140 The Durkheimian School and History
changes. “History is necessarily a summary, a précis, and that is why it takes
evolutions that extend over entire periods and compresses and concentrates
them into a few moments; it is in this sense that it extracts changes from the
course of time”.202
In posing the problem of memory as a collective reality, Maurice
Halbwachs was remaining faithful to Durkheimian thinking, but, it
seems, the influence of Henri Bergson led him down a metaphysical path.
Halbwachs, the positivist who was once so careful to offer empirical proofs
and who had promoted the statistical method in the social sciences, now
gives himself over to the most rampant speculation. He takes up residence in
the space that has been circumscribed by a metaphysical psychology.
Maurice Halbwachs’s thinking about the collective memory often drives
him into the last redoubts of sociological reductionism. The collective mem-
ory has its own being, distinct from individual memories. To remember is to
awaken the social influences concealed in the immediate consciousness. But
that is not all. Halbwachs intends in this way to move beyond traditional
history. “He hopes to retrieve what he calls a ‘living history’, that produced
by obscure collusions of consciences and which, in our modern societies,
form what we are tempted to call traditions”.203 Of course, this “living his-
tory” will be brought forth and explained not by historical science but by
sociology.
Maurice Halbwachs, then, drew a radical distinction between history
and sociology. In attendance at Raymond Aron’s defense of his thesis,
Halbwachs vigorously asserted the methodological supremacy of sociol-
ogy over history. He addressed Aron in the following terms: “On many
occasions you speak of the microscopic and the macroscopic level, in order
to designate, I think, the historical and the sociological, but you seem to
attribute greater value to the first than to the second. And yet for all that,
sociology is superior to history”.204 This statement is by itself a succinct
summation of the Durkheimian stance vis-à-vis history.

Notes
1 Antoine Prost, Douze leçons sur l’histoire (Paris: Galimmard, 1996), pp. 189–211.
2 Philippe Besnard, “L’Impérialisme sociologique face à l’histoire”. In Historiens
et sociologues (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1986), pp. 27–35.
3 Marcel Mauss, “Divisions et proportions de la sociologie” (1927). In Œuvres, 3
(Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1975), p. 182.
4 Marcel Mauss, Review: Teil, L’Année sociologique 1897–1898 (2, 1899),
p. 188.
5 Marcel Mauss and Paul Fauconnet, “La sociologie: objet et méthode”. In Marcel
Mauss (ed.), Essais de sociologie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1975), p. 34.
6 Henri Hubert, “Introduction”. In P.-D. Chantepie de La Saussaye (ed.), Manuel
d’histoire des religions (Paris: Armand Colin, 1921), p. xiii.
7 Dominique Parodi, Review: Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos,
L’Année sociologique, 1897–1898 (2, 1899), p. 144.
 The Durkheimian School and History 141
8 Gaston Richard, “Les Obscurités de la notion sociologique de l’histoire. Sociolo-
gie et axiologie”, Revue philosophique (26, 1906), p. 646.
9 Gaston Richard, “La Sociologie ethnographique et l’histoire”, Revue philos-
ophique (40, 1905), p. 506.
10 Paul Fauconnet, La Responsabilité. Étude de sociologie (Paris: Félix Alcan,
1922), p. 17.
11 Paul Lapie, Review: Labriola, L’Année sociologique, 1896–1897 (1, 1898),
p. 274.
12 See Robert N. Bellah, “Durkheim and History”, American Sociological Review
(24, 1959), pp. 447–461; Célestin Bouglé, “Sociologie, psychologie et histoire”,
Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (4, 1896), pp. 363–371; Philippe Steiner,
“La Méthode sociologique et l’histoire”. In Massimo Borlandi and Laurent
Mucchielli (eds.), La sociologie et sa méthode. Les Règles de Durkheim un siècle
après (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), pp. 165–184; Edward A. Tiryakian, For Dur-
kheim: Essays in Historical and Cultural Sociology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009),
pp. 63–66.
13 Charles Andler, “Sociologie et démocratie”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale
(4, 1896), p. 255.
14 Célestin Bouglé, “Sociologie et démocratie”, Revue de Métaphysique et de
Morale (4, 1896), pp. 118–122.
15 Émile Durkheim, “Preface to L’Année Sociologique” (1898). In Contributions
to L’Année Sociologique, trans. John French et al. (New York: The Free Press,
1980), p. 47.
16 Ibid., p. 49.
17 Émile Durkheim, “Preface to L’Année Sociologique” (1898), p. 52.
18 Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson (New
York: The Free Press, 1964), p. 40.
19 Ibid., p. 359.
20 Ibid., p. 368.
21 Ibid.
22 Émile Durkheim, “Preface to L’Année Sociologique” (1899). In Contributions to
L’Année Sociologique (New York: The Free Press), p. 54.
23 Durkheim uses the term “moral statistics” (statistique morale), meaning numeri-
cal data used to indicate social pathology.
24 Philippe Besnard, “L’Impérialisme sociologique face à l’histoire”, p. 29.
25 Émile Durkheim, “Preface to L’Année Sociologique” (1898), p. 48.
26 Émile Durkheim, “Débat sur l’explication en histoire et en sociologie” (1908). In
Textes, 1 (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1975), p. 199.
27 Émile Durkheim, “Preface to L’Année Sociologique” 1896–1897 (1, 1898),
p. 48.
28 Émile Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought: Lectures on the For-
mation and Development of Secondary Education in France, trans. Peter Collins
(London: Hentley, and Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1997), p. 331.
29 Émile Durkheim, “Remarques sur l’évolution du droit criminel en grèce” (1904).
In Textes, 1 (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1975), p. 242.
30 Émile Durkheim, “Preface to L’Année Sociologique” (1898), p. 48.
31 Émile Durkheim, “Sociologie et sciences sociales” (1909). In La Science sociale
et l’action (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1987), p. 157.
32 Émile Durkheim, “Cours de science sociale. Leçon d’ouverture” (1888). In La
science sociale et l’action (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1987), p. 107.
33 Émile Durkheim, “Sociologie et sciences sociales” (1909), p. 155.
34 Émile Durkheim, Review: Henri Berr. In Contributions to L’Année Sociologique
(New York: The Free Press, 1980), p. 27.
142 The Durkheimian School and History
35 Émile Durkheim, “Sociologie et sciences sociales” (1909), pp. 156–157.
36 Ibid., p. 154.
37 Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, trans. W. D. Halls (New
York: The Free Press, 1980), p. 45.
38 Émile Durkheim, “Sociologie et sciences sociales” (1909), p. 154.
39 Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, p. 134.
40 Émile Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought, p. 15.
41 Ibid., pp. 335–336.
42 Émile Durkheim, “La Prohibition de l’inceste et ses origines”, L’Année soci-
ologique 1896–1897 (1, 1898), p. 1.
43 Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph
Ward Swain (London: George Allen, 1964), p. 20.
44 Émile Durkheim, Review: Salvemini, Croce, Sorel. In Contributions to L’Année
Sociologique 1901–1902 (1903), p. 70.
45 Émile Durkheim, Review: Henri Berr. In Contributions to L’Année Sociologique
1911–1912 (1913), p. 89.
46 Émile Durkheim, Review: Salvemini, Croce, Sorel, p. 71.
47 See Philippe Besnard, “L’Impérialisme sociologique face à l’histoire”, pp. 27–35.
48 Émile Durkheim, Review: Xénopol. In Contributions to L’Année Sociologique
1904–1905 (1906), pp. 73–74.
49 See Johan Heilbron, French Sociology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).
50 Émile Durkheim, “Sociologie et sciences sociales” (1909), pp. 146–147.
51 Émile Durkheim, Review: Charles Seignobos, L’Année sociologique 1900–1901
(5, 1902), p. 124.
52 Charles Seignobos, La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales (Paris:
Félix Alcan, 1901), p. 7.
53 On the influence of Fustel de Coulanges, see Steven Lukes, Émile Durkheim,
His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study (London: Penguin, 1988),
pp. 58–65; François Héran, “L’Institution démotivée. De Fustel de Coulanges à
Durkheim et au-delà”, Revue française de sociologie (28, 1987), pp. 67–98; “De
La Cité antique à la sociologie des institutions”, Revue de synthèse (3–4, 1989),
pp. 363–390.
54 Émile Durkheim, Review: Charles Seignobos, p. 127.
55 See Dominique Parodi, Review: Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos,
“Introduction aux études historiques”, L’Année sociologique 1897–1898 (2,
1899), pp. 142–145; Hubert Bourgin, Review: Charles Seignobos, “La Méthode
historique appliquée aux sciences sociales”, Revue d’histoire moderne et con-
temporaine (3, 1901–1902), pp. 661–666.
56 Émile Durkheim, “Débat sur l’explication en histoire et en sociologie” (1908),
p. 203.
57 Philippe Besnard, “L’Impérialisme sociologique face à l’histoire”. In Historiens
et sociologues aujourd’hui, journées d’études annuelles de la société française de
sociologie (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1984), pp. 27–35.
58 Émile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Forerunners of Sociology (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1965), p. 59.
59 Georges Davy, “L’Explication historique et le recours à l’histoire d’après
Comte, Mill et Durkheim”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (58, 1949),
pp. 330–362.
60 Mike Gane, “Durkheim contre Comte dans les Règles”. In Charles-Henry Cuin
(ed.), Durkheim d’un siècle à l’autre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1997), pp. 34–35.
61 Émile Durkheim, “La Sociologie en France au XIXe siècle” (1900), p. 119.
62 Émile Durkheim, “Cours de science sociale. Leçon d’ouverture”, p. 88.
 The Durkheimian School and History 143
e
63 Émile Durkheim, “La Sociologie en France au XIX siècle” (1900), p. 119.
64 Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, p. 140.
65 Ibid., p. 127.
66 See Johan Heilbron, “Ce que Durkheim doit à Comte”. In Philippe Besnard,
Massimo Borlandi, and Paul Vogt (eds.), Division du travail et lien social
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993), p. 63; Félix Pécault, “Auguste
Comte et Émile Durkheim”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (28, 1921),
pp. 639–655.
67 Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, pp. 108–109.
68 W. Paul Vogt, “Durkheimian Sociology versus Philosophical Rationalism: The
Case of Célestin Bouglé”. In Philippe Besnard (ed.), The Sociological Domain:
The Durkheimians and the Founding of French Sociology (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press & Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme,
1983), pp. 231–247.
69 Célestin Bouglé published extensively on the work of Cournot. See “L’Opinion
de Cournot sur la crise universitaire”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (7,
1899), pp. 352–364; “Les Rapports de l’histoire et de la science sociale d’après
Cournot”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (6, 1905), pp. 349–376. See
also his Latin thesis: Quid e Cournot disciplinâ ad scientias “sociologicas” pro-
movendas sumere liceat (Carnuti, 1899).
70 Célestin Bouglé, “Gabriel Tarde un sociologue individualiste”, Revue de Paris
(May–June 1905), pp. 294–316.
71 Raymond Aron, Mémoires, cinquante ans de réflexions politiques (Paris: Jul-
liard, 1983), 83.
72 See Alain Policar, Célestin Bouglé, justice et solidarité (Paris: Michalon, 2009).
73 Laurent Mucchilli, “La guerre n’a pas eu lieu: les sociologues français et
l’Allemagne (1870–1940)”, Espace-Temps (53–54, 1993), pp. 7–18.
74 Bouglé owed an important debt to French socialists such as Saint-Simon, Fou-
rier, and Proudhon. See Célestin Bouglé, Proudhon (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1930);
Socialismes français: du “socialisme utopique” à la “démocratie industrielle”
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1946). But he was critical of the Marxist class struggle.
See Célestin Bouglé, “Marxisme et sociologie”, Revue de Métaphysique et de
Morale (16, 1908), pp. 723–724; Joshua M. Humphreys, “Durkheimian Sociol-
ogy and 20th-Century Politics: The Case of Célestin Bouglé”, Journal of Human
Sciences (12, 1999).
75 Célestin Bouglé, Les Sciences sociales en Allemagne. Les Méthodes actuelles
(Paris: Félix Alcan, 1896), pp. 4–7.
76 Ibid., p. 19.
77 Ibid., p. 144.
78 Ibid., p. 20.
79 Ibid., p. 37.
80 Ibid., p. 21.
81 Ibid., p. 36.
82 Ibid., p. 59.
83 Ibid., p. 36.
84 See Célestin Bouglé, Review: A.-D. Xénopol, H. Berr, F. Simiand, B. Croce, “Dis-
cussions sur les rapports de l’histoire avec les sciences naturelles et les sciences
sociales”, L’Année sociologique 1902–1903 (7, 1904), pp. 148–151.
85 Célestin Bouglé, Review: Paul Mantoux, L’Année sociologique 1903–1904 (8,
1905), p. 163.
86 Célestin Bouglé, Qu’est-ce que la sociologie? (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1939), pp. 1–2.
87 Célestin Bouglé, Review: Karl Lamprecht, L’Année sociologique 1897–1898 (2,
1899), p. 142.
144 The Durkheimian School and History
88 Célestin Bouglé, Bilan de la sociologie française contemporaine (Paris: Félix
Alcan, 1935), p. 94.
89 Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1899), p. 15.
90 Célestin Bouglé, “Individualisme et sociologie”, Revue bleue (4, 1905), p. 587.
91 Célestin Bouglé, Essays on the Caste System, trans. D. F. Pocock (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 6.
92 Célestin Bouglé, Review: Alphone Darlu, L’Année sociologique 1897–1898 (2,
1899), p. 145.
93 Célestin Bouglé, Les Idées égalitaires (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1899), p. 87.
94 Célestin Bouglé, Qu’est-ce que la sociologie?, p. 47.
95 Célestin Bouglé, “Les Rapports de l’histoire et de la science sociale d’après
Cournot”, p. 375.
96 Ibid., p. 349.
97 Maurice Halbwachs, “Célestin Bouglé sociologue”, Revue de Métaphysique et
de Morale, 48, 1942, p. 31.
98 William Logue, “Sociologie et politique: le libéralisme de Célestin Bouglé”,
Revue française de sociologie (20, 1979), p. 146.
99 Célestin Bouglé, Les Idées égalitaires (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1899, p. 15.
100 Ibid., pp. 99–100.
101 Ibid., pp. 148–149.
102 Ibid., pp. 152–153.
103 Ibid., p. 169.
104 Célestin Bouglé, “L’Entrecroisement des groupes”, Revue bleue (6, 1906), p. 596.
105 Célestin Bouglé, Les Idées égalitaires, p. 194.
106 Célestin Bouglé, La Démocratie devant la science. Études critiques sur
l’hérédité, sur la concurrence et la différenciation (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1904).
107 Johan Heilbron, “Les Métamorphoses du durkheimisme, 1920–1940”, Revue
française de sociologie (26, 1985), pp. 203–239.
108 Hubert Bourgin, De Jaurès à Léon Blum. L’École Normale et la politique
(Paris: Fayard, 1938).
109 Maurice Halbwachs, “Célestin Bouglé sociologue”, Revue de Métaphysique et
de Morale (48, 1941), p. 25.
110 Pierre Chanu and François Dosse, L’Instant éclaté (Paris: Aubier, 1994), p. 139.
111 In this journal, François Simiand published two important notes on the works
of sociologists and social scientists. See François Simiand, “L’Année sociologique
1897”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale (6, 1898), pp. 608–653; “L’Année
sociologique 1898”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (7, 1899), pp. 606–609.
112 Philippe Besnard, “Le Groupe durkheimien et le combat épistémologique pour
la sociologie”. In Historiens et sociologues aujourd’hui (Paris: Éditions du
CNRS, 1986), pp. 25–29; Gérard Noiriel, “L’Éthique de la discussion. À propos
de deux conferences sur l’histoire (1903–1906)”, pp. 79–93; “L’Épistémologie
durkheimienne, l’ancienne et la nouvelle histoire”, pp. 111–123. In Lucien
Gillard and Michel Rosier (eds.), François Simiand (1873–1935). Sociologie-
Histoire-Économie (Amsterdam: Les Éditions des archives contemporaines,
1996); Massimo Borlandi, “Durkheim, les durkheimiens et la sociologie
générale: De la première section de L’Année à la reconstruction d’une problé-
matique perdue”, L’Année sociologique (48, 1998), pp. 27–65.
113 François Simiand, “L’Année sociologique française”, Revue de Métaphysique et
de Morale (6, 1898), p. 608.
114 Ibid., p. 639.
115 Ibid., pp. 640–641.
116 Henri Hauser, L’Enseignement des sciences sociales. État actuel de cet enseigne-
ment dans les pays du monde (Paris: Maresq, 1903). See François Simiand on
Henri Hauser’s book (1903). In Marina Cédronio (ed.), Méthode historique
 The Durkheimian School and History 145
et sciences sociales (Amsterdam: Éditions des archives contemporaines, 1987),
pp. 177–178.
117 François Simiand, “Méthode historique et science sociale”, Revue de synthèse
historique (6, 1903), p. 3.
118 Ibid., p. 3.
119 Simiand had earlier explained this point. “Psychological elements are related
only indirectly to individual psychology; they belong to a group psychology,
to a social psychology. The phenomena of social psychology escape individual
introspection; they must be treated objectively”. (François Simiand, “Déduc-
tion et observation psychologique en économie sociale”, Revue de Métaphy-
sique et de Morale (7, 1899), p. 461.
120 François Simiand, “Méthode historique et science sociale”, Revue de synthèse
historique (6, 1903), p. 4.
121 Ibid., p. 5.
122 Ibid., p. 7.
123 Ibid., p. 9.
124 Ibid., p. 14.
125 Ibid., p. 15.
126 Ibid., p. 20.
127 Ibid., p. 17.
128 Célestin Bouglé, “La Méthodologie de François Simiand et la sociologie”,
Annales sociologique (121, 1936), p. 10; Marina Cedronio, “Le statut de
l’histoire”. In Lucien Gillard and Michel Rosier (eds.), François Simiand
(1873–1935). Sociologie-Histoire-Économie (Amsterdam: Les Éditions des
archives contemporaines, 1996), pp. 103–109.
129 François Simiand, “Méthode historique et science sociale”, pp. 17–19.
130 François Simiand, “La Causalité en histoire” (1906). In Marina Cédronio (ed.),
Méthode historique et sciences sociales (Amsterdam: Éditions des archives con-
temporaines, 1987), p. 227.
131 Ibid., pp. 229–235.
132 Philippe Steiner, “La Sociologie économique dans l’Année sociologique (1897–
1913)”. In Lucien Gillard and Michel Rosier (eds.), François Simiand (1873–
1935). Sociologie-Histoire-Économie (Amsterdam: Les Éditions des archives
contemporaines, 1996), pp. 31–41.
133 Basile V. Damalas, L’œuvre scientifique de François Simiand (Paris: Presses uni-
versitaires de France, 1947).
134 See François Simiand, Statistique et expérience, remarques de méthode (Paris:
Marcel Rivière, 1922).
135 Célestin Bouglé, “La Méthodologie de François Simiand et la sociologie”,
p. 12.
136 François Simiand, La Méthode positive en science économique (Paris: Félex
Alcan, 1912), p. 179.
137 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 1 (Paris: Félix
Alcan, 1932), pp. 102–103.
138 Ibid., p. 183.
139 François Simiand, “Déduction et observation psychologique en économie soci-
ale. Remarques de méthode”, pp. 446–462.
140 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 2, p. 532.
141 François Simiand, “Systèmes économiques”, L’Année sociologique 1902–1903
(7, 1904), p. 580.
142 François Simiand, La Méthode positive en science économique, p. 180.
143 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 2, p. 541.
144 François Simiand, Le Salaire des ouvriers des mines de charbon en France
(Paris: Cornély, 1907), p. 58.
146 The Durkheimian School and History
145 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 2, p. 543.
146 François Simiand, “Systèmes économique”, L’Année sociologique 1902–1903
(7, 1904), p. 580.
147 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 1, p. x.
148 W. Paul Vogt, “The Uses of Studying Primitives: A Note on the Durkheimians,
1890–1940”, History and Theory (15, 1976), pp. 33–44.
149 François Simiand, Review: Thonnar, L’Année sociologique 1901–1902 (6,
1903), pp. 483–484.
150 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 2, p. 578.
151 François Simiand, Recherches anciennes et nouvelles sur le mouvement general
des prix du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1932), p. 6.
152 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 2, p. 579.
153 Ibid., pp. 582–583.
154 Ibid., p. 587.
155 Maurice Halbwachs welcomed this: “We have nothing to regret or to envy in
other disciplines, if it is true as it seems to us that [. . .] Mr. Simiand offers the
proof that it is now possible to raise the study of man and the social sciences
to the very level that the natural sciences have already reached”. (Maurice Hal-
bwachs, “Une théorie expérimentale du salaire”, Revue philosophique (114,
1932), p. 363.
156 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 1, p. 38.
157 Ibid., 2, pp. 567–568.
158 Ibid., p. 572. See Valade, Bernard, Introduction aux sciences sociales (Paris:
Presses universitaires de France, 1996), pp. 315–316.
159 François Simiand, Statistique et experience (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1922), p. 7.
160 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
161 That is why, Bouglé observes, Simiand “wanted to be a historian as well as
a statistician: to grasp the phases of a development over a fairly long span of
time, to show the rhythm of events, to determine the general ups and downs
[. . .] In his eyes, that is the best way to establish, in a quasi-experimental man-
ner, the relations of causality”. (Célestin Bouglé, “La Méthodologie de Fran-
çois Simiand”, p. 21. See Marina Novella Borghetti, “L’Histoire à l’épreuve de
l’expérience statistique: l’histoire économique et le tournant des années 1930”,
Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines (6/1, 2002), pp. 15–38.
162 Pierre Chaunu, L’Historien dans tous ses états (Paris: Perrin, 1984), p. 120.
163 François Simiand, Cours d’économie politique 1930–1931 (Paris: Domat-
Montchrestien, 1932), pp. 38–39.
164 See François Simiand, Review: Bücher, L’Année sociologique (2, 1897–1898),
1899, p. 444.
165 Robert Marjolin, “François Simiand’s Theory of Economic Progress”, Review
of Economic Studies (5, 1937–1938), pp. 159–171.
166 François Simiand, Cours d’économie politique 1930–1931, p. 82.
167 Ibid., p. 115.
168 See Maurice Lévy-Leboyer, “L’Héritage de Simiand: prix, profit et termes
d’échange au XXe siècle”, Revue historique (243, 1970), pp. 77–103.
169 François Simiand, Cours d’économie politique 1930–1931, p. 138.
170 François Simiand, Le Salaire, l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, 1, p. xiv.
171 Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard,
1981), pp. 268–280.
172 François Simiand, Letter to Gaëtan Pirou, Revue d’économie politique (50,
1936), p. 224. On Simiand’s social monetarism, see Cours d’économie poli-
tique 1929–1930 (Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1931); Le Salaire, l’évolution
sociale et la monnaie, 2 Paris: Félix Alcan, 1932), pp. 480–503; “La monnaie
réalité sociale”, Annales sociologiques (1936), pp. 1–86; Jean-Jacques Gislain
 The Durkheimian School and History 147
and Philippe Steiner, La sociologie économique, 1890–1920 (Paris: Presses uni-
versitaires de France, 1995), p. 91; Michel Rosier, “Le Monétarisme social”.
In Lucien Gillard and Michel Rosier (eds.), François Simiand (1873–1935).
Sociologie-Histoire-Économie (Amsterdam: Les Éditions des archives contem-
poraines, 1996), pp. 215–226.
173 François Simiand, Les Fluctuations économiques à longue période et la crise
mondiale (Paris: Félix Alcan. 1932), pp. 3–4.
174 Ibid., p. 63.
175 François Simiand, Cours d’économie politique 1929–1930, p. 704.
176 Ibid., p. 5.
177 François Simiand, Les Fluctuations économiques à longue période et la crise
mondiale, p. 114.
178 Ibid., p. 126.
179 François Simiand, Cours d’économie politique 1929–1930, p. 701.
180 François Simiand, Les Fluctuations économiques à longue période et la crise
mondial, p. 126.
181 François Simiand, Cours d’économie politique 1929–1930, p. 716.
182 Marc Bloch, “Le Salaire et les fluctuations à longue période”, Revue historique
(173, 1932), pp. 1–21; Lucien Febvre, “Histoire, économie et statistique”,
Annales d’histoire économique et sociale (2, 1930), pp. 581–590.
183 Maurice Halbwachs, La Classe ouvrière et le niveau de vie (Paris: Félix Alcan,
1912), p. xvii.
184 Michel Amiot, “Le Système de pensée de Maurice Halbwachs”, Revue de syn-
thèse (62, 1991), pp. 265–288.
185 Fernand Dumont, Foreword: Maurice Halbwachs, La Topographie légendaire
des Évangiles en terre sainte (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1971),
pp. vii–viii.
186 “A representation”, Halbwachs writes, “is only social when it is in the indi-
vidual because of the group in which he is submerged, and which imposes it on
him”. (Maurice Halbwachs, La Classe ouvrirère et le niveau de vie (Paris: Félix
Alcan, 1913), p. 119).
187 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited and trans. Lewis Coser
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 172.
188 Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1968), p. 36.
189 Ibid., p. 46.
190 Ibid., p. 65.
191 Ibid., p. 37.
192 Ibid., p. 68.
193 Ibid., pp. 37–38.
194 Ibid., p. 50.
195 Ibid., p. 52.
196 Ibid., pp. 68–69.
197 Ibid., p. 79.
198 Ibid., p. 70.
199 Ibid., p. 72.
200 Ibid., pp. 77–78.
201 Ibid., pp. 101–102.
202 Ibid., p. 103.
203 Fernand Dumont, Foreword: Maurice Halbwachs, p. viii.
204 Maurice Halbwachs quoted. In John Craig, “Maurice Halbwachs à Stras-
bourg”, Revue française de sociologie (20, 1979), p. 283.
Conclusion

While it is true that, from its beginnings, sociology has taken the turf of the
other social sciences as its building site, we may say, following that meta-
phor, that the discipline of scientific history has done the same and that,
more particularly, it has risen on the foundations of sociology itself. These
frequent encroachments of sociology on history and of historical science
on sociology have been the cause of much debate and of ongoing disputes
between practitioners of the two disciplines. Georges Gurvitch has pointed
out that confrontations between historical science and sociology were inevi-
table, for “both were master sciences serving as guides to all the others”.1
What, then, has been the outcome of the past century’s dialogue between
history and sociology? What are the principal ramifications? It would seem
that the intellectual landscape of the historical discipline has been changed
more than that of sociology. The sociological holism of Durkheim and the
historical synthesis of Henri Berr have left deep marks on the face of histori-
cal science. In challenging the individualistic determinism of certain histori-
ans, in shaking off the yoke of metaphysics, they forced history’s way into
the family of the social sciences and humanities, although this process had
begun in the last third of the 19th century.
From the beginning of the 20th century, the historian gradually ceased
to be an isolated scholar, poring patiently over documents, classifying them
and seeking constantly to perfect his methods of inquiry. Henceforth, the
historian’s field would be defined by that of the social sciences. With the
founding of the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale in 1929, Lucien
Febvre and Marc Bloch in effect signed the birth certificate of this new,
multidisciplinary history. But in reality, this “new history”2 was not so
new—it had been taking shape since the mid-19th century. Thus, the ini-
tiative of Bloch and Febvre must be seen as part of a long and continuing
process.3
The new history, as Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre conceived it, would
have to enlist the collaborarion of all those who were devoted to “the study
of contemporary societies and economies”.4 Not having a clearly defined
theoretical program,5 the Annales cultivated mistrust of narrative and “bat-
tlefield history” [histoire-bataille].
150 Conclusion
In founding the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, moreover,
Bloch and Febvre were promoting a history that was no longer content to be
an introductory course or a method for sociology, but claimed to be a total
science of man, as Henri Berr was hopeful enough to call it in the first years
of the century. A combination of factors worked in favor of their ambitions.
The Durkheimian school was disintegrating: its founder was dead, and
many of its promising collaborators had been lost in the Great War. As to
Berr’s historical synthesis, it was never able to bring the historical commu-
nity around fully to its philosophical vision of the human future. Thus, as
André Burguière remarks, “the terrain was vacant, and the Annales moved
in”.6 History became thereupon the federating force behind the social sci-
ences. “There is no economic or social history”, declares Lucien Febvre in
his Combats pour l’histoire, “there is simply history, in its unity”.7 To a
large extent, this all-embracing concept of history was built on the model
of Henri Berr’s “historical synthesis” and on that of Durkheim’s sociology.
What we must do now is place in perspective these twin influences on the
new history.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the Revue de synthèse historique,
founded by the philosopher Henri Berr, was patiently setting out the mile-
stones for the new history.8 From the outset, Berr’s intention was simple:
to move beyond narrative and events-based history and to foster dialogue
with the social sciences. The invitation was issued, and all were asked to
contribute their particular skills to opening up history into an ecumenical
science. Fernand Braudel had no doubt that Berr was among those most
responsible for the new, multidisciplinary orientation that history was
acquiring: “This quest for a non-narrative history imposed itself irresistibly
upon contact with the other social sciences—a contact that was inevitable
and that, in France, took place after 1900 thanks to Henri Berr’s marvel-
ous Revue de synthèse historique, which when we read it in retrospect is
so exciting”.9 In Braudel’s eyes, the collective work of Berr was of interest
not only from the viewpoint of the history of ideas. In 1964, in a tribute to
Berr, Braudel stresses the importance of that work in the development of the
social sciences, and also demonstrates its continued currency: “Henri Berr
was the first to launch the enterprises by which we still live today and the
formulas that we go on repeating [. . .] The Revue de synthèse still carries
just as much weight in French thinking as does Durkheim’s Année soci-
ologique, the Annales de géographie founded in 1891, or Péguy’s Cahiers
de la Quinzaine—as much, and perhaps more”.10 Recalling the years of his
youth, Lucien Febvre adds: “We were young historians back then in 1900,
at the École Normale, somewhat adrift, bored with our studies—and then
along came the Revue de synthèse historique!”11
From 1900 until World War I, Henri Berr’s influence was at its zenith.
Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch became valued collaborators for Berr, and
their first writings appeared in his Revue de snthèse historique. Febvre’s
pieces, inspired by Vidal de la Blache, dealt with the Franche Comté and
 Conclusion 151
those of Bloch with the Île de France. Their contribution to the Évolution de
l’Humanité was just as important: Lucien Febvre published there his pieces
on Luther and on Rabelais, and Marc Bloch his essay on feudal society.
Upon founding the Annales in 1929, Febvre and Bloch waged the same
battle as Henri Berr against the mindset of specialization. Between the social
sciences, they remarked, “the walls are so high that they often block the
view [. . .] it is against these formidable schisms that we intend to take
arms”.12 In his Combats pour l’histoire, Lucien Febvre again recalls that
the goal is “constantly to negotiate new alliances between neighboring or
distant disciplines; to beam the light from several heterogeneous sciences on
the same subject: this is a primordial task, and of all those tasks that impose
themselves on a history impatient with its confines and its partitions, surely
the most pressing and also the most fertile”.13 Henri Berr, of course, was not
unfamiliar with this definition of the role of history.14
History is never written once for all. It is the science of change. In the
wake of the Second World War, Lucien Febvre felt the need to adjust the pro-
gram of the Annales in light of the recent cataclysms. The journal changed
its name to Annales, Économies, Societés, Civilisations. “The Annales are
changing because everything around them is changing: people, things, in a
word, the world”.15 With this concept of history, Leopold von Ranke’s16
famous dictum—that we must study the facts “as they really happened”—is
rendered completely sterile, and the maxim of Charles Seignobos—“history
is conducted with texts”—becomes suspect. Yet in this stance, Febvre was
championing, not a subjective, partisan history, but a history that poses
problems to the past “in light of mankind’s present needs”. Such a declara-
tion serves to distance Febvre from scientific positivism. And there is no
doubt that on this point, Henri Berr served him as a valuable guide. In all
his writings, as we have seen, Berr promoted a science of history that was
always a “work in progress”, one that was defined and renewed in a world
in constant motion. For Berr, history was above all the science of life. To
link science and life, to understand the human drama, was his chief concern,
as we can appreciate in the title of his first book, Vie et science. Lucien
Febvre viewed history no differently: “History is the science of man, let
us never forget it. It is the science of perpetual change in human societies,
of their perpetual and necessary readjustment to new conditions of mate-
rial, political, moral, religious and intellectual existence. The science of that
accord that is negotiated, of that harmony that emerges perpetually and
spontaneously, in all ages, between the diverse and synchronic conditions
of human existence: material conditions, technical conditions, and spiritual
conditions. It is in this way that history rediscovers life. It is in this way that
it ceases to be a slave driver [maîtresse de la servitude], and to pursue this
dream—deadly in all senses of the word—of imposing on living beings the
law supposedly dictated by the dead of yesteryear”.17 For his part, Marc
Bloch, in his Apologie pour l’histoire, challenges the historian to “under-
stand the past on the basis of the present” and “to understand the present
152 Conclusion
in light of the past”.18 The past and the present illuminate on each other in
a profound dialectical relationship: once again, Henri Berr’s lesson has been
thoroughly taken on board.
Just as decisive was the influence of Durkheimian sociology on the new
history. Lucien Febvre recalls that fact to readers of the Annales in this col-
orful passage: “When at the age of 20, with mixed feelings of admiration
and rebelliousness, we read the Année sociologique, one of the novelties that
caught our attention was surely this perpetual effort to revise and adapt the
classification frameworks which, volume by volume, were softening and
shifting, and always for reasons which Durkheim’s followers would explain,
discuss and put into clear formulas. A fine lesson in method, and one that
they offered not only to their avowed followers: they had other disciples,
whether they knew it or not, even among those who were put off by the
intransigence of some of their assertions; for in those distant times they [the
Durkheimians] were young, like us, and they were not always concerned to
couch their claims with due modesty”.19 And in the Combats pour l’histoire,
Lucien Febvre goes further: “The advocates of the Durkheimian School did
not send history up in smoke. They took it over as its owners. Everything
in the domain of the historical sciences that seemed to them susceptible of
rational analysis they claimed as their own. History was the residue—noth-
ing more than a simple chronological account of superficial, and usually
random, events. In short, a story”.20
It is nonetheless true that the work of Durkheim and his disciples remained
a model of scientific rigor in the eyes of Febvre and Bloch. “Durkheim has
taught us to analyze in greater depth, to grasp problems more closely, to be
less facile in our thinking”,21 writes Bloch. In a sense, the Annales could be
regarded as the spiritual daughter of the Année sociologique. Explaining
the objectives of his journal, Marc Bloch writes to Marcel Mauss: “What
we want is not just a nice little scholarly journal, in the petty-minded sense
of the word; we intend it to be serious, that goes without saying, free of all
journalistic taints, with a very wide field (embracing) all of the past (includ-
ing the primitive past), and all of the present, and taking the words ‘eco-
nomic and social’ in their broadest meaning [. . .] We must tell you that we
are counting on your collaboration, whenever you have the time, in the
form of articles, notes and reviews, and lastly we want your permission to
put your name on the list of contributors [. . .] We will do our best to ensure
that the Annales will be of some service to these ‘human’ studies, for which
the Année sociologique has already done so much”.22 Marcel Mauss (and
Maurice Halbwachs) responded favorably to the invitation of Bloch and
Febvre, and he sat on the editorial board of the Annales until the year of his
death in 1945.
There is no doubt, however, that the most important contribution of the
Durkheimians to the Annales project came from François Simiand, although
he never wrote or contributed anything directly to the journal. We will recall
the acerbic attacks that the young Simiand leveled against the historians
 Conclusion 153
and their “tribe of idols”. He wanted historians to revamp their method, to
revise their object of study. Of course, as Philippe Besnard notes, Simiand
“had little chance of diplomatic success”23 on this score. And the author
was himself aware of this, as his ideas were aimed essentially at the next
generation of historians. At the end of his famous article in the 1903 Revue
de synthèse historique, Simiand declares: “Yet I believe that in the very work
of current historians, in the carefully studied choice and arrangement of
their works, in their clear concern to renew their work by drawing on the
progress achieved in neighboring disciplines, we can already see signs that
they are gradually replacing their traditional practice with a new, positive,
objective study of the human phenomenon capable of scientific explanation,
and they are directing the core of their efforts to the conscious development
of a social science. I hope that the new generation will see these trends
through to conclusion”.24
As we know, the historians of the “new generation” gave a warm wel-
come to François Simiand’s demands. The editors of the Annales provided
eloquent testimony to this fact when, in celebrating the journal’s 50th
anniversary, they published Simiand’s text. They added a revealing edito-
rial note: this text “is well known among all those who learned their trade
before 1939. We publish it now for the benefit of young historians, to allow
them to measure the road traveled over half a century, and to understand
more thoroughly this dialogue of history and the social sciences, which is
still the goal and the very raison d’être of our journal”.25 This is surely
a strange fate for an author who had raised the hackles of historians at
the beginning of the century; half a century later, Simiand’s article was in
effect being hailed as a methodological manifesto for the new history. Marc
Bloch was surely entitled to declare, in wonderment after reading Le Salaire,
l’évolution sociale et la monnaie, that Simiand was now part of the “heri-
tage” of historians.26
François Simiand’s intellectual legacy is something of a paradox.27
Neglected by economists, forgotten by sociologists, Simiand’s main contri-
bution was to the development of economic history. We are also aware of
the intellectual debt that Ernest Labrousse owed to Simiand.28 Following in
Simiand’s footsteps, he too became interested in long-term economic fluc-
tuations over the course of history. “Economic life”, Labrousse writes, “in
all its fields—prices, production, trade, income, consumption—is nothing
but a succession of imbalances, alternating between upswings and down-
swings, between expansion and contraction, between [periods of] prosper-
ity and recession, usually classified according to their duration”.29 François
Simiand might have penned these words, and it was indeed he who paved
the way to this concept of the economy as a sequence of alternating phases.
Pierre Chaunu regarded Simiand as one of the forefathers of serial history.30
“All historians have been speaking the language of François Simiand for 50
years now”, he wrote in 1984.31 We could not ask for a better illustration of
the impact that Simiand had on the renewal of historical science in France.
154 Conclusion
Yet despite their discipline’s close relationship to sociology, theory was not
front and center among the concerns of historians. Hence their mistrust of
philosophy, from which they struggled to free themselves. What history had
to do, above all, was to define its method. For historians, methodology boiled
down to digging through archives and establishing the chronological order
in which events unfolded. By contrast, sociologists, inspired by the model of
the natural sciences, were from the beginning determined to find laws. This
explains—at least in part—why they did not share the historians’ attachment
to the temporal dimension. The laws they were discovering emboldened them,
and they did not typically confine their study to the life of a single society over
time. They wandered freely across the ages, drawing comparisons between dif-
ferent societies that did not always have the same cultural points of reference.
Debate was complicated by a host of apparently irreconcilable contra-
dictions. Scholars were obliged, then, to specify the place and the role of
theory and of empiricism, of necessity and of chance, of the institutional
and of the individual fact. Historians had never had to grapple with such
questions, which were for the most part left to philosophers. The thorni-
est question, however, and the one that forced historians into a debate for
which they often seemed ill-prepared, was this: could history be scientific?
Denials came from two sides—first from the metaphysicians, and then
from the champions of a subjective, personal history, personified by Jules
Michelet. At the end of the 19th century, sociologists—and in particular
Durkheim and his followers—insisted on raising questions, not only those
that the historians thought settled, but some new ones as well. What was the
relevance of long-term history? What were the preconditions for a histori-
cal psychology? How did memory and history differ from each other? The
entire 19th century, and the early part of the 20th as well, was the scene of
an ongoing effort to adapt history to a new intellectual landscape. It is well
to remember this in making connections between the many authors and cur-
rents of thought that this book has tried to bring to life. Comte, Cournot,
Renan and Taine were theorists of knowledge, first and foremost. The speed
and the nature of the changes to which they were witness induced them to
think about history and about the need to create a social science. They were
pioneers, and they opened up many paths for research. We do not know
whether Fustel de Coulanges read Comte or Cournot, but there is no doubt
that he was imbued with the scientific spirit that marked his century. He was
the first truly professional historian, eager to find a scientific method for his
discipline, and he was also the first member of his intellectual community
to discuss the challenges posed by the emergence of sociology. As we have
seen, he was skeptical of the utility of that science, and yet his Cité antique
remains an emblematic example of applied historical sociology. Louis
Bourdeau was a fairly orthodox disciple of Auguste Comte, from whom he
absorbed inspiration in his attacks on history and historians. Paul Lacombe
drew upon Cournot and Taine to propose a synthesis between the individual
 Conclusion 155
and the institutional, thus paving the way for the work of Henri Berr. As to
Charles Seignobos, the sworn enemy of sociology, he rejected philosophy
and metaphysics in all their forms, and proposed a method that ended up
exaggerating the importance of events and particular facts—indeed he was
a prime illustration of the difficulties in sustaining dialogue between histo-
rians and sociologists.
It is undeniable that history underwent profound transformations at the
hands of these authors, beginning in the second half of the 19th century.
The historical discipline, now so keen to define itself as a science, was torn
between competing forms of positivism that were often in open contradic-
tion to each other. By the end of the century, the walls between the disci-
plines, as we know them today, were beginning to rise. Dialogue became
more strained, the exchanges more barbed. The historian, already well
established institutionally, suddenly felt threatened by the pretensions of
the upstart sociology. Sociologists, we must say, took a haughty view—they
regarded history as a discipline without theoretical ambitions, incapable of
going beyond mere description.
Taking cognizance of these disputes at the dawn of the 20th century,
Henri Berr dreamed of restoring unity to the family of the social sciences.
But to the new generation of historians Berr, an admirer of Cournot’s
work, seemed a figure from the past, and this view was forcibly driven
home to him by Lucien Febvre. His ideas held less and less attraction for
the Durkheimians, who were now focused mainly on their own pursuits.
Synthesis had been rendered obsolete by the advance of the social sciences
that were rapidly asserting themselves. And so began the era of specializa-
tion, which, within a few decades, would lead to the fragmentation of the
social sciences.

Notes
1 Georges Gurvitch, Dialectique et sociologie (Paris: Flammarion, 1962), p. 299.
2 Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, Le Phénomène nouvelle histoire, stratégie et idéologie
des nouveaux historiens (Paris: Économica, 1983).
3 Laurent Mucchielli, “Aux origines de la nouvelle histoire: l’évolution intellec-
tuelle et la formation du champ des sciences sociales (1880–1930)”, Revue de
synthèse (1, 1995), pp. 55–99.
4 Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, “Introduction”, Annales d’histoire économique
et sociale (1, 1929), p. 1.
5 See Fernand Dumont, L’Anthropologie en l’absence de l’homme (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1981), p. 323; Guillaume Blanc, “Une pratique sans
questionnement”, Hypothèses 2011 (15/1, 2012), pp. 15–25.
6 André Burguière quoted. In François Dosse, L’Histoire en miettes (Paris: La
Découverte, 1987), p. 39.
7 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965), p. 20.
8 Fernand Braudel considered Henri Berr as one of the founders of the Annales
School—with Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. See Fernand Braudel, “Personal
Testimony”, Journal of Modern History (44, 1972), pp. 448–467.
156 Conclusion
9 Fernand Braudel, “Histoire et sociologie”. In Georges Gurvitch (ed.), Traité de
sociologie, 1 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France), p. 86.
10 Fernand Braudel, “Hommage à Henri Berr pour le centenaire de sa naissance”,
Revue de synthèse (85, 1964), p. 23.
11 Lucien Febvre quoted. In Henri Berr, “Au bout de trente ans”, Revue de synthèse
historique (1, 1930), p. 228; see: “Henri Berr: un deuil des Annales”, Annales,
Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1955), pp. 2–3.
12 Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, “Introduction”, Annales d’histoire économique
et sociale (1, 1929), p. 1.
13 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire, p. 14.
14 See Robert Leroux, “La Correspondance de Lucien Febvre à Henri Berr”, Revue
d’histoire des sciences humaines (2, 2000), pp. 163–168.
15 Lucien Febvre, “Face au vent: manifeste des Annales nouvelles”, Annales, Écon-
omies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1, 1946), p. 7.
16 Henri Berr, “Ranke et sa conception de l’histoire. À propos d’un ouvrage récent”,
Revue de synthèse historique (8, 1903), pp. 93–96.
17 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire, pp. 31–32.
18 Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, ou métier d’historien (Paris: Armand
Colin, 1971), pp. 11–13.
19 Lucien Febvre, “Histoire, économie et statistique”, Annales d’histoire
économique et sociale (2, 1930), p. 583.
20 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire, pp. 422–423.
21 Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, ou métier d’historien, p. 27.
22 Letter of Marc Bloch to Marcel Mauss. In Marcel Fournier, Marcel Mauss (Paris:
Fayard, 1994), p. 641.
23 Philippe Besnard, “L’Impérialisme sociologique face à l’histoire”. In Historiens
et sociologues (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1986), p. 32.
24 François Simiand, “Méthode historique et science sociale”, Revue de synthèse
historique (6, 1903), p. 157.
25 Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1, 1960), p. 83.
26 Marc Bloch, “Le Salaire et les fluctuations à longue période”, Revue historique
(173, 1932), p. 2.
27 Lucette Le Van-Lemesle, “Polémique posthume: le contexte institutionnel”,
pp. 53–59; John Day, “L’École des Annales”. In Lucien Gillard and Michel
Rosier (eds.), François Simiand (1873–1935). Sociologie-Histoire-Économie
(Amsterdam: Les Éditions des archives contemporaines, 1996), pp. 95–101.
28 Christophe Charle, Interview with Ernest Labrousse, Actes de la recherché en
sciences sociales (332–333, 1980), pp. 111–125; Debeir Jean-Claude, “Le Long
terme dans l’histoire économique: comparaison avec E. Labrousse”. In Lucien
Gillard and Michel Rosier (eds.), François Simiand (1873–1935), pp. 145–149.
29 Ernest Labrousse, La crise de l’économie française à la fin de l’Ancien Régime et
au début de la Révolution (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1990), p. ix.
30 Pierre Chaunu, “L’histoire sérielle, bilan et perspective”, Revue historique (243,
1970), p. 305.
31 Pierre Chaunu, L’historien dans tous ses états (Paris: Perrin, 1984), p. 120.
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Index

Amiot, Michel 147 Castelli Gattinara, Enrico 96

Andler, Charles 103, 141
Arnélia, Lucien 27
Aron, Raymond 132, 140, 143, 146
Aurell, Jaume 8
Bellah, Robert N. 141
Bergson, Henri 25, 28
Bernard, Claude 130
Bernès, Marcel 120–1
Berr, Henri 2, 5–8, 18–9, 28, 32, 39,
47–52, 63–4, 67–98, 107, 114, 114,
141–3, 149–52, 155–6
Besnard, Philippe 140–4, 153, 156
Blanc, Guillaume 155
Bloch, Marc 45, 109, 135, 147,
149–53, 155–6
Borghetti, Marina Novella 146
Borlandi, Massimo 141, 143–4
Bosser, A. 88, 97
Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 24
Boudon, Raymond 61, 159
Bouglé, Célestin 8, 18–9, 83, 86,
102–03, 109, 11–19, 125, 135, 141,
143–6
Bourdé, Guy 4–5, 8–9
Bourdeau, Louis 4–7, 31–2, 40–7,
63–4, 73–4, 154
Bourgin, Hubert 89, 97, 108, 118,
142, 144
Boutroux, Émile 22, 69–73, 75, 81,
84–5, 123
Braudel, Fernand 147, 149–52, 155–6
Bréhier, Émile 25, 29
Burguière, André 150, 155
Burkhardt, Jacob 2, 8
Charle, Christophe 156
Charlton, D.G. 9
Chaunu, Pierre, 119, 130, 146, 153, 156
Chimisso, Cristina 84
Clark, Terry N. 86
Cointet, Jean-Paul 24, 29
Collingwood, R.G. 8
Comte, Auguste 1, 4–6, 13–20, 24–7,
31–2, 41–4, 47–8, 51, 61, 70, 73, 76,
80, 108, 110, 142–3, 154
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 25
Cournot, Antoine Augustin 6, 13,
16–19, 24–9, 32, 48, 69, 74, 94, 111,
116, 143–4, 154–5
Coutau-Bégarie, Hervé 155
Craig, John 147
Croce, Benedetto 59, 66
Damalas, Basile V. 145
Darwin, Charles 16
Davy, Georges 95, 98, 142
Day, John 156
Debeir, Jean-Claude 156
Delorme, Suzanne 4
Descartes, René 24, 81
De Smedt, Charles 54, 65
Dholquois, Guy 29
Digeon, Claude 23, 29, 65
Dosse, François 144, 155
Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Gaston 4, 8
Durkheim, Émile 2, 7–8, 20, 32, 39,
50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62–3, 66, 70,
80, 82–4, 86, 89, 92, 95–6, 101–12,
114, 116–23, 125, 132, 135, 141–4,
149–50, 152, 152

Carbonnel, Charles-Olivier 5, 8, 34, 62, Ehrard, Jean 8

86, 98 Essertier, Daniel 64
176 Index
Faublée, Jacques 86
Fauconnet, Paul 102, 140–1
Fawtier, Robert 65
Febvre, Lucien 5, 8, 18, 28, 45, 86,
94–5, 98, 135, 147, 149–52,
155–6
Fénelon 24
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 76, 112
Fournier, Marcel 156
Fugler, Martin 96
Fustel de Coulanges 2–3, 5–6, 8, 31–40,
47, 53, 55, 58, 62–3
Gassendi, Pierre 77, 79–80, 85
Gemelli, Giuliana 86
Gérard, Alice 86
Gernet, Louis 95, 98
Giddings 120–1
Gillard, Lucien 144–5, 147, 156
Goblot, Edmond 88
Gore, Keith 29
Granet, Marcel 98
Guiraud, Paul 34, 62, 79
Guiraud, Victor 23, 29
Gurvitch, Georges 149, 155–6
Halbwachs, Maurice 88, 102, 116,
118–19, 135–44, 146–7, 152
Halphen, Louis 97
Hanotaux, Gabriel 39, 59, 61, 63, 66
Hauser, Henri 121–2, 144
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm 25, 112
Heilbron, Johan 118, 142–4
Héran, François 62–3, 142
Herder, Johann Gottfried 47
Hours, Joseph 66
Hubert, Henri 102, 111, 140
Humphreys, Joshua 143
Iggers, Georg 8
Jehring von, Rudolf 112–13
Jullian, Camille 2, 4–5, 8, 34, 38, 53–4,
62–3, 65, 79
Keylor, Robert R. 65, 84
Labrousse, Ernest 130, 153, 156
Lacombe, Paul 4–7, 19, 22, 29,
32, 47–52, 64–5, 80–1, 109,
121, 154
Lalande, André 109
Lamprecht. Karl 88, 97, 143
Lamy, Jérôme 97
Langlois, Charles-Victor 3, 5, 8, 31–2,
52–4, 56, 58–9, 61–2, 65–6, 120–1,
140, 142
Lapie, Paul 102, 120, 141
Laplace, Pierre-Simon de 16
La Bruyère, Jean de 24
Lavisse, Ernest 4–5, 9, 53–4
Lazarus, Moritz 112–13
Lefebvre, Georges 39, 63, 66
Leibniz 16–7
Le Van-Lemesle, Lucette 156
Lepenies, Wolf 28
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 14, 26, 89
Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice 146
Liard, Louis 9
Logue, William 116, 144
Lombardo, Patrizia 28
Lukes, Steven 142
Mantoux, Paul 89, 91–2, 98, 143
Marjolin, Robert 132, 146
Marrou, Henri-Irénée 5, 9
Martin, Hervé 4–5, 8–9
Mauss, Marcel 94, 98, 101, 111, 140,
152, 156
May, Louis-Philippe 98
Michelet, Jules 2–3, 13, 18, 33, 60, 154
Monod, Gabriel 3–5, 8, 23, 29, 34–5,
39–40
Moreau, Pierre 8, 60, 66
Morel, Charles 39, 63
Mucchelli, Laurent 141, 155
Nedelkovitch, Ducham 85
Noiriel, Gérard 9, 144
Nordmann, Jean-Thomas 29
Noronha-DiVianna, Isabel 65
Palmade, Guy 8
Parodi, Dominique 102, 108, 140, 142
Pascal, Blaise 24
Paumen, Jean 27
Pécault, Félix 143
Pellissier, Georges 34, 62
Perrier, Edmond 93
Petit, Annie 29
Petitier, Paule 8
Pickering, Mary 27
Pierenne, Henri 58, 66
Pirou, Gaëtan 146
Poisson, Siméon Denis 16
Policar, Alain 143
Prévost-Paradol, Lucien-Anatole 22
Prost, Antoine 65, 140

Ravaisson, Félix 75, 85
Rebérioux, Madeleine 86
Renan, Ernest 4, 6, 13, 19–26, 28–9,
31, 75, 112, 154
Rhodes, Robert C. 86
Ribot, Théodule 59, 66, 79
Richard, Gaston 102, 141
Richard, Nathalie 28
Rosca, D.D. 29
Rosier, Michel 144–5, 147, 156
Ruyer, Raymond 27
Saint-Martin, Arnaud 97
Saint-Sernin, Bertrand 27
Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de 9,
19, 143
Salvemini, Gaetano 107
Schöffler, Peter 64, 97
Sée, Henri 28
Seignobos, Charles 3–7, 32, 47, 50,
52–9, 61, 64–6, 91, 97, 108–09,
114–5, 120–5, 140, 142, 151, 155
Seys, Pascale 28
Siegel, Martin 38, 86, 98
Simmel, Georg 112–13, 117
Index 177
Simiand, François 2, 6, 8, 84, 86, 91,
102, 108, 118–35, 143–7, 152–3, 156
Spencer, Herbert 117
Spinoza 25
Steiner, Philippe 141, 145, 147
Steinmetz, George 98
Taine, Hippolyte 4, 6, 13, 21–6, 28–9,
31, 39, 48, 50, 69, 74, 112, 116, 154
Tarde, Gabriel 18, 28, 32, 50–2, 92,
111, 117, 143
Tiryakian, Edward A. 141
Tocqueville, Alexis de 35, 60–1, 66, 117
Tourneur-Aumont J.M. 36, 39, 62–3
Valade, Bernard 146
Van Deth, Jean-Pierre 28
Vico, Giambattista 47, 73
Vogt, Paul W. 116, 143, 146
Walch, Jean 59, 66
Worms, René 120
Xénopol, A.-D. 64, 89–91, 97–8, 108,
142–3