KARL LAMPRECHT AND KULTURGESCHICHTE. 421 



sitates a minute study of the hitherto neglected records of town and 

 country life, the contracts, deeds, marriage bonds, parish lists, folk- 

 lore and song, in fact everything down to the names of villages and 

 the houses of the Bauern. Nothing has escaped Lamprecht's atten- 

 tion ; and the results of twenty years of such investigation are recorded 

 in his 'Deutsche Geschichte' (in six volumes) already mentioned. 

 The 'common man,' Avho Alexander v. Humboldt had declared in 1809 

 could never be anything but a minute particle of the material of his- 

 tory, becomes with the Leipzig historian a guiding force in society, the 

 very corner-stone of the building. 



According to this method 'the making of history' which the poli- 

 ticians so often conceive to be their role in life is a very misleading 

 term. History is not made, but it unfolds itself as a resultant of the 

 thousand and one forces of which our leaders are but the humble ex- 

 ponents. The great influences which give a* people their character 

 and determine the direction of their development arise from climatic 

 and geographical conditions, race antecedents and the reaction on these 

 of economic forces, which forces are themselves in large measure the 

 resultants of the above-mentioned conditions. Economic advantage 

 and industrial aptitude determine the character of a people, not the 

 will of leaders or leading classes. 



To be sure this is not altogether a new view of history. Voltaire, 

 suggestive in so many lines of thought, boldly proclaimed such to be 

 the true historical method. Buckle spent twenty years in the attempt 

 to elevate history to the rank of a science, and certainly succeeded in 

 calling attention to the neglected influences in 'history-making'; but 

 not in relegating governments to the positions of social machines, not 

 in dethroning the long-worshipped heroes and martyrs of the past. 

 Moreover, Buckle's work was in no way so intensive as that of the 

 German Eulturliistoriker, and what Buckle attempted for English his- 

 tory, Karl Biedermann accomplished for Germany in his monumental 

 ' History of German Civilization in the Eighteenth Century. ' Bieder- 

 mann was one of those liberal thinkers whose dream for the Vaterland 

 was so rudely disturbed by the all-conquering Bismarck spirit in the 

 early seventies. The influence of both Buckle and Biedermann was 

 swallowed up by the idea- and hero-worship of Eanke and his follow- 

 ers. And this tendency was in full harmony with the prevailing polit- 

 ical opinions. The same influence is found in England in the w^orks 

 of Freeman and Gardiner and Stubbs. 



The appearance of the 'Deutsche Geschichte' was a challenge for 

 opposition of which its author must have been conscious. German 

 history writing, since 1860, as has been suggested, has been a constant 

 imitation of the great Berlin professor, Eanke. And to understand 



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