42 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Kampf um die Kulturgescliiclite it is necessary first to review 

 briefly the Eanke method. 



Leopold von Eanke 's first great service to accurate scholarship was 

 his practical discovery of the Venetian relation. From this time on 

 he was a most tireless student of European archives; his books are all 

 most faithful interpretations of the contents of these store houses of 

 history. From the time of the appearance of his 'Eonian Popes' and 

 the 'German History in the Time of the Eef ormation, ' 1834 to 1847, 

 a sort of ideology has prevailed in almost all historical writing not 

 only in Europe, but in our own country. With Eanke great ideas not 

 dissimilar to those of Plato's philosophical system furnished the motif 

 according to which all his work was done. These ideas were the state, 

 the church, the reformation, the counter reformation, etc. The indi- 

 vidual had but to adjust himself to the greater almost God-given idea 

 of the time; he was not the author of the idea or one of the makers 

 of movements, as Lamprecht would have him. In truth Eanke 's his- 

 tory deals almost exclusively with politics and political heroes, repre- 

 sentatives of certain ideas. This idealism was a part of the prevailing 

 philosophy, an application in history of Fichte and Hegel and Schell- 

 ing in philosophy. Now the followers of Eanke, instead of adding to 

 and broadening the Eanke method as times changed and new ^Yeltan- 

 schauungen took the place of the older idealism, considered themselves 

 fortunate if the world called them successful imitators and pupils. 

 Great works they produced, indeed, such, for example, as Curtius' 

 'Greece,' Trietschke's 'Germany in the Nineteenth Century' and 

 Mommsen 's ' Eonian History ' ; but they were all of essentially the same 

 nature — page after page of accurate history bridged up on tiers of 

 learned notes. A statement of Eanke or of Mommsen is capable of 

 mathematical demonstration. Aside from those greater Eanlcianer, 

 who are all dead except Mommsen, we have a whole brood of Jungran- 

 Jcianer, writing biographies, Staatengeschichte and theses on isolated 

 ideas. These fill to-day the majority of German professor- and docent- 

 ships; and history in their hands has reached a scientific accuracy never 

 dreamed of by Gibbon or Niebuhr. 



Looked at from one point of view, one would have expected these 

 students and writers to endorse heartily Lamprecht 's claim that his- 

 tory is a science. All their efforts, since Eanke 's latter years at any 

 rate, had been directed toward that goal; but the author of the new 

 'Deutsche Geschichte' took them off their feet by cutting asunder all 

 connection between history and its supposed 'makers,' princes and 

 heroes, by putting first and above all the great masses of the peoi)le 

 and by making havoc with the Eanke tradition. Instead of seeking 

 the sources of historical information in the greater or smaller Euro- 

 pean state archives, Lamprecht had diligently studied the Stadt and 



