320 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 

 " interesting." There is nothing like a real " value " in 



O O 



any sense underlying history ; the word value therefore 

 would better give place to the term " centre of interest " 

 a collection of stamps may be such a " centre." History, 

 then, as the knowledge of cultural singularities, is " inter- 

 esting," and its aspects change with the interests of the 

 person who writes history : there is no commonly accepted 

 foundation of history. 1 



And it follows that history as regarded by Kickert can- 

 not serve as the preliminary to philosophy. It may be 2 of 

 use for personal edification or for practical life : granting 

 that the " centres of interest " as referred to are of any real 

 ethical or at least factual importance. But you may take 

 away from history even the greatest personalities, and your 

 view of the universe, your philosophy, would remain the 

 same, except of course so far as these personalities them- 

 selves have contributed to philosophy in any way. 



Now, on the other hand, it is worth noticing that, even 

 if there were generally accepted "values," history as the 

 doctrine of singularities would be deprived of philosophical 

 importance. Its single caces would then be merely instances 

 of certain types of actions and occurrences which have been 



1 To avoid mistakes I wish to say here most emphatically that, according 

 to Kickert, the method of history is regarded as completely free from sub- 

 jectivity as soon as its "values" are once established. But this cannot 

 avail to save the theory. 



2 This is a rather optimistic conception of "history." Personally, I 

 must confess that even its emotional and practical importance seems to me 

 to be at least diminished by the retarding effects which all sorts of 

 " historical" considerations in science as well as in arts and in public life 

 carry with them. All real progress is non-historical and its champions 

 almost always have become martyrs : this fact seems not to recommend 

 history as a means of education, except for persons of a very strong 

 character. 



