420 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



any, for example, deals with the manifestations of plant life. In 

 neither ease can we determine the nature of the inner, the motive- 

 essence. The difference in the two sciences, however, consists in the 

 fact that the historian deals with the activities of men and peoples 

 long since passed beyond the reach of his personal knowledge. He 

 relies upon more or less accurately attested depositions given by con- 

 temporaries or by the persons themselves, while the botanist, having 

 the object of his investigations before him in most instances, is relieved 

 of the task of rehabilitating extinct existences or species. The histo- 

 rian reconstructs the social and political characters of the past, mas- 

 ters the different intellectual movements, and then places each in its 

 proper relative position, according to the most exacting methods of 

 judgments and interpretations. The rules of accepting and rejecting 

 evidence, of interpreting and classifying great historic events and ten- 

 dencies which guide the historian in his reconstruction of the past 

 entitle him to the rank of a scientist. The naturalist places a given 

 animal in a certain class because of certain outward manifestations — 

 the expression of the inner unlvnown forces; the historian places the 

 historic character, whether statesman or peasant, in a certain class, by 

 reason of the same kind of manifestations. In both instances the sci- 

 entist is dealing with unknown quantities; but in both the outward 

 activities are observed, interpreted, classified and made the basis of 

 future judgments. 



Following such a method of investigation one is prepared to appre- 

 ciate, if not to accept, the second claim Lamprecht has put forward, 

 viz., that history has not so much to do with great personages of the 

 past as with the currents of thought, feeling or passion which produced 

 those personages. He looks upon social, political and industrial lead- 

 ers as exponents of popular or economic movements and deals with 

 them as such in his writing. This relegates the kings and ministers 

 of the present and past to quite insignificant positions and places the 

 masses of the people in the forefront — a method not a little distasteful 

 to the crowned heads of Europe. 



Our new historian goes still further in his readjustment of his- 

 torical method. Every people has gone through a certain more or less 

 well-defined series of stages of evolution, e. g., the Germans have passed 

 through the following : symbolism, or the earlier and medieval history 

 of the race ; individualism, modern times to the French revolution ; the 

 age of the subjective soul-activity, or the nineteenth century to Wag- 

 ner and Darwin, who introduce the present age of excitement and ner- 

 vosity, if such a word may be used. It is the soul-life, das Seelenlehen, 

 of the people which determines the direction of national life, and this 

 soul-activity is to be understood only as one fully comprehends the 

 every-day life of the peasant, the artisan and the trader. This ncces- 



