314 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to know to which royal family the king at any given period belongs; 

 nor is science particularly concerned with the list and the peculiarities 

 of the wives of Henry VIII. Science does not even care tremendously 

 whether Marie Antoinette spent her summers at Versailles or at Medi- 

 cine Hat ; nor yet whether the jewels of the mother of the Gracci were 

 real diamonds or only paste. This sort of information, which seems 

 to he of paramount importance in what popularly passes under the 

 name of history, has no part or place in the type of history in which 

 science is interested. 



Just exception might be taken to any attempt on the part of a 

 specialist in science to define what constitutes the right sort of history — 

 even though it lie history of science. Fortunately, however, some 

 specialists in history have given us a definition of history to which the 

 scientist may give a hearty consent. Traces of this interpretation of 

 bistory may be found in a number of historical works of the past half 

 century, but it has only recently found extended expression in the wri- 

 tings of Carl Lamprecht and his followers. A good summary of the 

 philosophy of this school of historians was given by Professor Lam- 

 precht in a course of lectures delivered by him in 1904 both in St. Louis 

 and in Xew York. These lectures have been published in English 

 under the title " What is History? " 



For science the most important points in the doctrines of this 

 Leipzig school seem to be these : ( 1 ) That history — real history — con- 

 sists in the portrayal of a scries of culture epochs; (2) that the char- 

 acter of these culture epochs is determined by the higher spiritual or 

 psychic attitude of the more gifted of the people, and not by the whims 

 and idiosyncrasies of a line of sovereigns; (3) that the most telling 

 criterion of the psychic attitude of a people at a given epoch is found 

 in the productions of their creative imagination. Hence, if we would 

 understand the nature of the culture of any people at a given epoch, 

 and trace tbe mechanism of its changes to the next epoch, we must 

 study first of all the products of their creative imagination, i. c, their 

 art, their poetry, their philosophy, and their science. Important, but 

 of secondary importance, arc the political, social and economic condi- 

 tions. In other words, the psychic character of any nation at any epoch 

 is determined by the spiritual attitude of the best people; and this 

 condition is expressed more directly in the works of their creative 

 imagination, and less directly in their political, social and economic 

 conditions. 



To sum up this first point, then, we may say that the sort of history 

 needed by science is a portrayal of culture epochs, their character hav- 

 ing been determined by a study of the works of tbe creative imagina- 

 tion of tbe best people of the time; and hence the importance of the 

 history of science is derived from the fact that science is one of the 



