Chapter XV: Part II: Concerning the History of Historiography (6)

This last form of eclecticism and the open attempts to renew romantic idealism more or less completely, as well as romantic methods of historiography, have become more frequent since modern consciousness has withdrawn itself from positivism and has declared its bankruptcy. But all this is of importance rather as a symptom of a real advance in thought. And the new modern philosophies of intuition and philosophy of values must be looked upon rather as symptoms than as representing progress in thought (I mean in general, and not in the particular thoughts and theories which often form a real contribution). The former of these, however, while it correctly criticizes science as an economic construction useless for true knowledge, then proceeds to shut itself up in immediate consciousness, a sort of mysticism, where historical dialectic finds itself submerged and suffocated; and the latter, placing the conception of value as guardian of the spirit in opposition to the conceptions of science like "a philosophical _cave canem_" (as our imaginative Tari would have said), leaves open a dualism, which stands in the way of the unity of history and of thought as history. When we look around us, therefore, we do not discover that _new philosophy_ which shall lay the foundations and at the same time afford justification for the new historiography by solving the antithesis between imaginative romanticism and materialistic positivism. And it is clear that we are not even able to discuss such a philosophy as a _demand,_ because the demand for a particular philosophy is itself the thinking of that particular philosophy, and therefore is not a demand but an actuality. Hence the dilemma either of saying nothing about it, and in this case of not speaking even of positivism as a period that has been closed and superseded, or of speaking of the new philosophy as of something that lives and exists, precisely because it does live and exist. And since to renounce talking of it has been rendered impossible by the very criticism chat we have devoted to it, nothing remains save to recognize that philosophy as something that exists, not as something to be invoked. Only we must not _look around us_ in order to see where it is, but return to _ourselves_ and have recourse to the thought that has animated this historical sketch of historiography and to all the historical explanations that have preceded it. In the philosophy that we have delineated, reality is affirmed to be spirit, not such that it is above the world or wanders about the world, but such as coincides with the world; and nature has been shown as a moment and a product of this spirit itself, and therefore the dualism (at least that which has troubled thought from Thales to Spencer) is superseded, and transcendency of all sorts, whether materialistic or theological in its origin, has also been superseded with it. Spirit, which is the world, is the spirit which develops, and is therefore both one and diverse, an eternal solution and an eternal problem, and its self-consciousness is philosophy, which is its history, or history, which is its philosophy, each substantially identical with the other; and consciousness is identical with self-consciousness--that is to say, distinct and one with it at the same time, as life and thought. This philosophy, which is in us and is ours, enables us to recognize it--that is to say, to recognize ourselves outside of us--in the thought of other men which is also our thought, and to discover it more or less clearly and perfectly in the other forms of contemporary philosophy, and more or less clearly in contemporary historiography. We have frequent opportunities of effecting this recognition, which is productive of much spiritual comfort. Quite lately, for instance, while I was writing these pages, the historical work of a historian, a pure historian, came into my hands (I select this instance among many) where I read words at the very beginning which seemed to be my very own: "My book is based upon the conviction that German historical inquiry must elevate itself to freer movement and contact with the great forces of political life and culture, without renouncing the precious tradition of its method, and that it must plunge into philosophy and politics, without experiencing injury in its end or essence, for thus alone can it develop its intimate essence and be both universal and national."[1] This is the philosophy of our time, which is the initiator of a new philosophical and historiographical period. But it is not possible to write the history of this philosophy and of this historiography, which is subject and not _object_, not for the reason generally adopted, which we have found to be false, since it separates the fact of consciousness from the fact, but for the other reason that the history which we are constructing is a history of 'epochs' or of 'great periods,' and the new period is new, just because it is not a period--that is to say, something closed. Not only are we not able to describe its chronological and geographical outline, because we are ignorant as to what measure of time it will fill (will it develop rapidly in thirty or forty years, or will it encounter obstacles, yet nevertheless continue its course for centuries?), what extent of countries it will include (will it remain for long Italian or German, confined to certain Italian or German circles, or will it diffuse itself rapidly in all countries, both in general culture and in public instruction?), but we are unable to limit _logically_ what may be its value outside these considerations. The reason for this is that in order to be able to describe its limitations, it must necessarily have developed its antitheses--that is to say, the new problems that will infallibly arise from its solutions, and this has not happened: we are ourselves on the waves and we have not furled our sails in port preparatory to a new voyage. _Bis hierher ist das Bewusstsein gekommen_ (Knowledge has reached this point in its development), said Hegel, at the end of his lectures upon the philosophy of history; and yet he had not the right to say so, because his development, which went from the unconsciousness of liberty to the full consciousness of it in the German world and in the system of absolute idealism, did not admit of prosecution. But we are well able to say so, for we have overcome the abstractness of Hegelianism.

[1] Friedrich Meinecke, _Weltbürgerthum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaates,_ second edition, preface, p. vii. (München u. Berlin, Oldenburg, 1911.)