The Genetic conception of History 531 



3. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the meaning 

 of genetic history was fully realised. "Genetic" perhaps is as good 

 a word as can be found for the conception which in this century 

 was applied to so many branches of knowledge in the spheres both 

 of nature and of mind. It does not commit us to the doctrine 

 proper of evolution, nor yet to any teleological hypothesis such as is 

 implied in "progress." For history it meant that the present con- 

 dition of the human race is simply and strictly the result of a causal 

 series (or set of causal series) a continuous succession of changes, 

 where each state arises causally out of the preceding ; and that the 

 business of historians is to trace this genetic process, to explain each 

 change, and ultimately to grasp the complete development of the life 

 of humanity. Three influential writers, who appeared at this stage and 

 helped to initiate a new period of research, may specially be mentioned. 

 Ranke in 1824 definitely repudiated the pragmatical view which 

 ascribes to history the duties of an instructress, and with no less 

 decision renounced the function, assumed by the historians of the 

 Aufklcirung, to judge the past ; it was his business, he said, 

 merely to show how things really happened. Niebuhr was already 

 working in the same spirit and did more than any other writer to 

 establish the principle that historical transactions must be related to 

 the ideas and conditions of their age. Savigny about the same time 

 founded the " historical school " of law. He sought to show that law 

 was not the creation of an enlightened will, but grew out of custom 

 and was developed by a series of adaptations and rejections, thus 

 applying the conception of evolution. He helped to diffuse the 

 notion that all the institutions of a society or a nation are as closely 

 interconnected as the parts of a living organism. 



4. The conception of the history of man as a causal development 

 meant the elevation of historical inquiry to the dignity of a science. 

 Just as the study of bees cannot become scientific so long as the 

 student's interest in them is only to procure honey or to derive moral 

 lessons from the labours of "the little busy bee," so the history of 

 human societies cannot become the object of pure scientific investiga- 

 tion so long as man estimates its value in pragmatical scales. Nor 

 can it become a science until it is conceived as lying entirely within 

 a sphere in which the law of cause and effect has unreserved and 

 unrestricted dominion. On the other hand, once history is envisaged 

 as a causal process, which contains within itself the explanation of 

 the development of man from his primitive state to the point which 

 he has reached, such a process necessarily becomes the object of 

 scientific investigation and the interest in it is scientific curiosity. 



At the same time, the instruments were sharpened and refined. 

 Here Wolf, a philologist with historical instinct, was a pioneer. 



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