THE LOGIC OF HISTORY 319 



must bear some relation in order to become important 

 historically. 



But what does that mean ? Is the relation to such 

 " values " to be regarded as really rendering history equal 

 to the sciences of nature in philosophical importance ? 



In the first place, there is no more agreement about 

 such " values " than there is in the field of morals. Imagine, 

 for instance, a religious enthusiast or recluse writing 

 history ! I fancy there would be very little mention of 

 warriors and politicians : war and politics would not be 

 " values " in any sense to such a man. And we know that 

 there are others to whom those products of civilised life 

 rank amongst the first. Eickert well notes that there is 

 one great objection to his doctrine the character of 

 universality l is wanting to his history, or rather to the 

 values forming its basis ; for there cannot be, or at least 

 there actually is not at present, a consensus omnium with 

 regard to these " values.'* 



I am convinced that Eickert is right in his conception 

 of real " history * as the knowledge of the single acts of 

 mankind. But this conception proves just the contrary 

 of what Eickert hoped to prove ; for history in this 

 sense is moulded by the actual products of culture, that 

 is, by the effects which actually exist as groups of cultural 

 processes, and it cannot be moulded by anything else ; 

 the historian correlates history with what interests him 

 personally. 



Here now we have met definitively the ambiguous 

 word : history indeed is to end in " interest " and in being 



1 The word "universality" to be understood here in quite an un- 

 pretentious quasi-popular meaning, not strictly epistemologically. 



