316 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



singleness only, and, in spite of that, are of the highest 

 philosophical importance. He does not think very highly 

 of so-called "historical laws," which must be mere 

 borrowings from psychology or biology, applied to history 

 proper, and not touching its character as " history." We 

 agree with these statements to a considerable extent. But 

 what then about " history proper," what about " the single 

 in its very singleness " ? 



Let us say at first a few words about this term " single ' 

 so very often applied by us. In the ultimate meaning of 

 the word, of course, the series of actual sensations or " pre- 

 sentations " is the " single ): which is given " historically ' 

 to each invividual, and therefore to the writer of history 

 also, and in fact, history as understood by Kickert is based 

 to a great extent upon this primordial meaning of single 

 " givenness." The word " single," in his opinion, relates to 

 the actual and true specification of any event, or group of 

 events, at a given time and at a given locality in space, 

 these events possessing an identity of their own and never 

 being repeated without change of identity. If the subject- 

 matter of history is defined like this, then there are, indeed, 

 " Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung " with 

 regard to history, for natural sciences have nothing to do 

 with the single in such an understanding of the word. 



Kickert says somewhere that history as a real evolution, 

 as one totality of a higher order, would cease to be proper 

 history : and he is right. History, in fact, would soon lose 

 the character of specific attachment to a given space and to 

 a given time, and would lose its " non-repeatability," in the 

 logical sense at least, if it were one unit in reality: as 

 soon as it was that, it would have become a logical 



