The historian, Humboldt stresses, does not merely arrange facts meaninglessly; he attempts to discover links, to understand the events in a larger context. This distinguishes him from a mere pedant. “The historian worthy of the name must present every event as part of a whole.”70 He recognizes on one hand, the “inner spiritual freedom” of every individuality and, on the other, the dependence of every event on preceding and accompanying causes. He perceives that “reality, not withstanding its apparent haphazardness, is governed by necessity.” But to impose concepts upon the actual events is to violate this historical reality; not to go beyond the bare facts is to forego meaning. Not merely the understanding of a wider context, but the understanding of a concrete, individual historical situation requires more than the mere presentation of facts.
This interrelation of facts and ideas demands a twofold methodological approach. The first requirement, Humboldt counsels, is an “exact, impartial, critical examination of the events.”71 Here is the core of the critical method, the establishment of facts, the weighing of evidence through the empirical and rational approach to sources, documents, and the like. But in the search for meaning, for the “links within the matter under investigation,” this approach does not suffice. The idea must be comprehended, and the act of comprehension (Begreifen) requires resources other than those of purely conscious perception. In his search of the idea, the historian resembles the artist; only he is not permitted the latter’s free use of phantasy, but is much more closely bound to reality. The critical, empirical approach to this reality has to be supplemented by “intuiting that which cannot be reached by this means,” but by intuition (Ahnden) which proceeds from the concrete facts.72 This intuition for Humboldt implies that the “ideas” which express themselves in concrete reality, can be comprehended only approximately and dimly. But it also assumes that meaningful relationships exist. For man’s intuitive understanding (Ahnden) or rational comprehension (Begreifen) of such truth
presupposes within the comprehendent something analogous to what later will actually be comprehended, a pre-existing, original agreement between subject and object. Comprehension involves not merely development of subjectivity nor taking from an object, but both simultaneously.… When two persons are separated by a gulf, no bridge of understanding can lead from one to the other. In order to understand one another, one must in a sense already have understood each other to begin with.73
However, this theory of understanding assumes a common bond not entirely compatible with Humboldt’s view of the radical uniqueness of individuals, a contradiction of which he was never fully aware.
“On the Tasks of the Writer of History” was Humboldt’s last great contribution to historical theory. Two years later, Ranke’s Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples appeared with the famous methodological appendix, “In Criticism of Recent Historians.” But the basic metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of the great tradition of German historicism from Ranke to Meinecke had been already formulated by Humboldt. With his essay “On the Tasks of the Writer of History,” the philosophical theory of German historicism was complete. The break with Aufklärung and Humanitätsideal was now very real. Humboldt had always seen in history a vital, dynamic force which could not be directed by rational planning. He had never shared the faith of the philosophes in the possibility of reorganizing society along rational lines. Nevertheless, he had been firmly convinced that the basic unit in society is the individual. His concept of liberty had been cosmopolitan rather than national.
In the three decades that separated the essay “On the Limits of the State” from “The Tasks of the Writer of History,” Humboldt came to recognize the primacy of collective forces and he identified these with nationality. Humboldt recognized the central role of the state within the nation, and he developed a theory of knowledge aimed at the understanding of the irrational, vital forces of history and of the unique, metaphysical reality of these forces. These theories, the doctrine of ideas, the individualizing approach, the concept of the central role of politics in history, formed the basic elements of the philosophy of history of German historiography and historical thought from Ranke to Meinecke.
[ CHAPTER IV ]
The Theoretical Foundations of German Historicism II: Leopold von Ranke
1.
Two misconceptions have marked the image of Ranke held by American historians, since history in the 1880’s became an academic discipline on purportedly Rankean principles. Ranke has been viewed as the prototype of the nontheoretical and, for many, the politically neutral historian. When his conservative prejudices have been recognized, he has nevertheless been given credit for the fact that these prejudices were not reflected in his historical narrative.1
Graduate study in history developed in American universities at a time when philosophic naturalism and positivism dominated the intellectual scene. In their endeavor to give academic respectability to historical study, a few writers who had been influenced by Comte and Buckle, e.g., Andrew D. White, John Fiske, Henry and Brooks Adams, identified scientific history with the application to the historical process of general laws similar to those of the natural sciences. A far greater number of writers were conscious of the distinctions between historical narration which deals with unique situations and discourse in the natural sciences which aims at general and typical truths. Accordingly, they sought to explain the scientific character of historical writing and its method of establishing facts objectively, free from philosophical considerations. For this new school of historians Ranke was the “father of scientific history”2 who, as H. B. Adams at Johns Hopkins University observed at the time, “determined to hold strictly to the facts of history, to preach no sermon, to point no moral, to adorn no tale, but to tell the simple historic truth.” His sole ambition was to narrate things as they really were (“wie es eigentlich gewesen”).3
Ranke was thus identified in America with a concept of historical science that eliminated not only philosophical but also theoretical considerations. He was understood to have conceived historical science primarily as a technique that applied critical methods to the evaluation of sources. If carried out conscientiously, this approach by necessity would recognize only monographic studies as scientific. As Professor Emerton commented, after he proclaimed Ranke the founder of “the doctrine of the true historical method”: “If one must choose between a school of history whose main characteristic is the spirit, and one which rests upon the greatest attainable number of recorded facts, we cannot long hesitate.… Training has taken the place of brilliancy and the whole world is today reaping the benefit.”4 Similarly, George B. Adams told the American Historical Association, in a presidential address in 1908 in which he attempted to defend “our first leader” against the onslaught of the social scientists, that theoretical questions must be left to “poets, philosophers, and theologians.”5 The image of the nonphilosophical Ranke, concerned only with facts, rejecting all theory, was taken over by the “New Historians” who had repudiated the older “scientific” tradition and stressed the interaction of social factors in human history. Frederick Turner and J. H. Robinson attacked the Ranke whom the “scientific” school had created. The image of the naturalistic Ranke survived. Only a few years ago, as prominent a historian as Walter P. Webb observed that Ranke “was contemporary with Lyell and Wallace, Darwin and Renan, who were applying the analytical and critical method with startling results in their respective fields. He turned the lecture room into a laboratory, using documents instead of ‘bushels of clams.’ “6
To an extent, Ranke’s individualizing method did prepare the way for the type of unreflective, professional history-writing which marked not only American historiography at the end of the century, but had already manifested itself in many German historical and legal studies in the second part of the nineteenth century.7 Still, despite Ranke’s concern with the critical examination of sources,