Were we permitted to deal solely with the absolute concepts in natural science and in historical science, the misunderstanding between the two groups of scientists would be of but short duration. Unfortunately for the peace of mind of truth-seeking men, there are also relative historical concepts; and, more unfortunately still, a relative historical concept does not differ in form from the relative concept in natural science, or the concept that is valid only for a portion of the reality. To render the situation even more confusing, it is possible to have a historical concept that is more comprehensive than a scientific concept. This fact would seem to point to the unsoundness of the claim of the historian to the possession of a method logically different from that of the natural scientist. Every historical narrative contains concepts made up of elements that are common to a group of objects. The description of the condition of the French army on the eve of the FrancoPrussian war, of the German peasants in the time of Luther, of the French peasants under the old régime, deals with a group and forms a concept from what is common to a group and seemingly forms a general concept. This fact does not, however, change the logic of the historical method. The resemblance between the two methods is superficial. Just as the natural-science method, although dealing with a limited portion of the reality, into which the historical element enters, regards it from the point of view of the general and forms concepts valid for all the reality under investigation, so the historical method treats its large groups as unique, complex wholes and selects only such features of the groups as may be sufficient to characterize it. The aims are different; one concept is relatively general, the other is relatively individual. To base a logic of historical method upon concepts with general contents. would be impossible, as there is no means of knowing before investigation whether the historically important in a certain portion of the reality can be exhausted by relative historical concepts.

Rickert does not conclude his treatise with the discussion of the logic of the form of the historical concept. He devotes a chapter to the content of the concept, for the purpose of making clear why man is the center of all historical syntheses and why the values with which the historian deals are culture or social values. He goes even further, and realizing that the question may be and has been raised as to whether history, even if it be a science, may make the same claims to objectivity as natural science, he turns in the. last chapters of his book to the consideration of this problem and shows that the apriori of natural science outnumber those of historical science.

The compression of the arguments of a closely-reasoned work of seven hundred and forty pages into a score of pages is a thankless task and can never serve as a substitute for the original work; it can give little more than conclusions. The arguments justifying these conclusions must be sought in the work itself. It is no new method that Rickert has given; he has endeavored to show that the method that the historian has always employed and employs to-day is the logical one for him to use for the attainment of the end that he has in view; he shows, furthermore, that that end is justifiable and history is even more empirically objective than natural science. As social facts are a part of the empirical reality, he shows that a natural-science point of view is possible for society and that it may even be possible to formulate the laws of social evolution-but these laws are not historical laws, the laws of a unique series. An historical law, a law of what has happened but once and cannot happen again, is a contradictio in adjecto.1

The sociologists and the historians should endeavor to understand each other. At the conclusion of a review of Rickert's logic, based upon an article that gave, and intended to give, only a partial view of it, Lacombe seemed to realize that the difference between the methods of the sociologist and of the historian is due to a difference in point of view, and exclaimed: "Truly, at the end, it seems to me that our debate reduces itself and ends in very small proportions and amounts simply to this: M. Rickert says, 'What you call sociology may be what you will, but not history; I refuse to give it this name, this title.'—And I reply: 'Very well, so be it. We will reserve the name of history for the exposition of past events, such as has been practiced by that kind of studies in all times; but we shall continue to study events in an entirely different manner from you; we shall choose in the matter, in the historical reality, other aspects, other relations than those that alone have the privilege of interesting you; and we shall form a science different from yours. This science will be called sociology or philosophical history, or scientific history, it matters little what, but it will be always history, in this sense, that the historical fact, the human past, will always, indeed, be the object of our science as it is the object of yours.

When a sociologist writes like that, the discussion must be near its end. If historians and sociologists can agree that both deal with the past of society, but from different points of view; that one looks at it from the point of view of a unique evolution, and the other from the point of view of general facts and laws; that as their ends 1 Ibid., 258.

differ, their methods must differ; that there would be no confusion if we retained the term history for the older point of view and employed the term sociology for the later-if these fundamental points could be agreed upon, the debate would be over. Much that has been written in the course of the debate from Comte to Lamprecht is beside the mark. To argue that the natural-science method can be applied to the study of social facts is not to argue that the historical method is outgrown or that sociology can take the place of history. That would seem to be the fundamental defect in the position of Lamprecht. The historical method has not failed to keep abreast of the other sciences because it has not transformed itself into a natural science.' Historical method has progressed, not only in criticism, as Lamprecht acknowledges, but also in synthesis. How can any intelligent man who is not blinded by the belief that the natural-science method is the universal method compare the syntheses of European history produced in the past one hundred years with the syntheses upon the same subjects that were the products of preceding centuries, and say that the modern syntheses are not sounder and more scientific, that we are not working out a synthesis that will finally be accepted in its main outlines by scientific historians the world over? Even to-day historians are agreed upon the general outline of European history, and if they do disagree upon details, so do the natural scientists. Because these latter gentlemen cannot agree upon so fundamental a thing as whether acquired characteristics are transmitted, nobody thinks of substituting the historical method for the natural science method or of dubbing biology an art.

Buckle was both harsh and hasty in his condemnation of historians. To characterize as intellectually inferior the men whose names lend dignity to the long list beginning with Herodotus and extending, in his day, to Ranke, is pardonable only on the ground of youth. That he could not see that men were beginning to examine social phenomena from a new point of view, but that the new point of view did not render the old superfluous, is more intelligible. It is less intelligible after the discussion has lasted for a half-century, after sociology has taken shape and it is known that it is not history and cannot take the place of history. At a time when historical synthesis is steadily increasing in quantity and improving in quality, and when logic itself has at length justified the historical method, it would seem that the time had come to cease treating the

'See the pertinent remarks of Xénopol on the natural growth of a method, in the Revue de Synthèse Historique (October, 1901), 174–176.

Lamprecht, Die kulturhistorische Methode, 16.

old method as an outgrown point of view, as a kind of alchemy or astrology. As long as men seek for knowledge of the unique evolution of their social past, just so long will the historical method be justifiable and the historical synthesis, the synthesis of Thucydides, of Polybius, of Tacitus, of Gibbon, and of Ranke, will be scientific, although it will never be the synthesis of the natural sciences.

FRED MORROW FLING.

TWO LIVES OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.

ROBERTSON'S Charles V. appeared in the year 1769 and has since gone through some three dozen editions. The author was paid 4,500 pounds, the largest sum ever received for a work on history up to that time. His praises were loudly sung by many of the greatest men, and even Gibbon expressed himself as proud to be mentioned in the same breath. But perhaps the strongest proof of the estimation in which Robertson has been held is the fact that from that early day until 1902 there was no attempt in the English language to write a history of the period on a similar scale. The man who ruled over more territory than any other king or emperor since Roman times, the man whose reign saw the rise of the Protestant faith, was left without a modern biographer; and generation after generation of English readers was obliged to content itself with that which Robertson had offered.

The appearance, then, of a most careful and thoughtful work' by a thoroughly equipped Oxford scholar is a great event for the student of history. Not only is our actual knowledge greatly increased, but we are furnished with a point of vantage from which to look back and see what progress has been made in this field during the past century and a quarter. But first a word must be said about the relative scope of the two works, and it must be noted at the outset that Robertson's introductory "View of the State of Europe," which is the most scholarly part of his work, has no counterpart in Armstrong; that the latter treats of certain topics relating to the New World which Robertson reserves for a separate volume; and that, finally, Armstrong ends his work with 1555, the year of Charles's abdication, while Robertson continues to the Emperor's death in 1558. This latter circumstance is the more curious as Robertson professes to be writing a history of the reign and Armstrong of the life-distinctions, indeed, which are not logically adhered to by either writer. One last, important difference is, that Armstrong's work is more of a study, Robertson's more of a narrative; the one looks at a question from all sides, the other seems chiefly bent on the artistic representation of a scene or an

The Emperor Charles V., by Edward Armstrong, M.A. (2 vols., Macmillan, 1902).