Condorcet; Hegel; Comte 533 



7. The idea of development assumed another form in the 

 speculations of German idealism. Hegel conceived the successive 

 periods of history as corresponding to the ascending phases or ideas 

 in the self-evolution of his Absolute Being. His Lectures on the 

 Philosophy of History were published in 1837 after his death. His 

 philosophy had a considerable effect, direct and indirect, on the 

 treatment of history by historians, and although he was superficial 

 and unscientific himself in dealing with historical phenomena, he 

 contributed much towards making the idea of historical development 

 familiar. Ranke was influenced, if not by Hegel himself, at least by 

 the Idealistic philosophies of which Hegel's was the greatest. He 

 was inclined to conceive the stages in the process of history as marked 

 by incarnations, as it were, of ideas, and sometimes speaks as if the 

 ideas were independent forces, with hands and feet. But while Hegel 

 determined his ideas by a priori logic, Ranke obtained his by induc- 

 tion by a strict investigation of the phenomena; so that he was 

 scientific in his method and work, and was influenced by Hegelian 

 prepossessions only in the kind of significance which he was disposed 

 to ascribe to his results. It is to be noted that the theory of Hegel 

 implied a judgment of value; the movement was a progress towards 

 perfection. 



8. In France, Comte approached the subject from a different 

 side, and exercised, outside Germany, a far wider influence than 

 Hegel. The 4th volume of his Cours de philosophic positive, which 

 appeared in 1839, created sociology and treated history as a part of 

 this new science, namely as " social dynamics." Comte sought the key 

 for unfolding historical development, in what he called the social- 

 psychological point of view, and he worked out the two ideas which 

 had been enunciated by Condorcet: that the historian's attention 

 should be directed not, as hitherto, principally to eminent individuals, 

 but to the collective behaviour of the masses, as being the most 

 important element in the process ; and that, as in nature, so in 

 history, there are general laws, necessary and constant, which con- 

 dition the development. The two points are intimately connected, 

 for it is only when the masses are moved into the foreground that 

 regularity, uniformity, and law can be conceived as applicable. To 

 determine the social-psychological laws which have controlled the 

 development is, according to Comte, the task of sociologists and 

 historians. 



fact that the individual components of the former, namely the cells, are morphologically 

 as well as functionally differentiated, whereas the individuals which compose a society are 

 morphologically homogeneous and only functionally differentiated. The resemblances 

 and the differences are worked out in E. de Majewski's striking book, La Science de la 

 Civilisation, Paris, 1908. 



