668 EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



study of the elements which his most complex material embraces. 

 These he aims to set forth in the order of their importance consid- 

 ered from the point of view of the whole system of human interests 

 involved. The attitude of the historian is essentially judicial, and 

 sets up as its ideal the utmost impartiality which is compatible 

 with the specific assumptions which limit his treatment, such as 

 the concept of an individual life, a social evolution, the development 

 of a political form, and the like. 



Nevertheless the analyses of the historian necessarily concern 

 persons and occurrences, both of which are individual and unique. 

 They cannot, therefore, constitute a science in the ordinary accept- 

 ation of that term. Both biographer and historian seek the truth; 

 they employ the same canons as the scientist in establishing the 

 correctness of their observations; but in the end their aim is radi- 

 cally different from that of science, and cannot be expressed in its 

 terms. Life, whether of an individual or a group, is composed of 

 a series of experiences which have their existence and can never 

 recur; and be the subject-matter of history conceived as a succes- 

 sion of events or as the reaction of wills which gives rise to them, 

 the ideal of the historian is faithfulness in the representation of 

 these unique experiences, and nothing more. 



But the individual occurrence has no interest for the scientist 

 and no place in his system. For the successive stages which con- 

 stitute the life-history of a crystal, a plant, a man, or a nation he 

 has no concern. Not the individual fact, but the general principle, 

 not the event, but the law of its occurrence, not the unique reality, 

 but the universal form, is that which the scientist seeks. With the 

 methods and results of historical research, therefore, psychology 

 has no direct relation. The affiliations of history are with the utili- 

 tarian, not the normative sciences. It is a study of human char- 

 acter which is made in the chamber instead of the market, by the 

 thinker instead of the politician, and is reflective instead of prac- 

 tical in its outcome only because of the irreversible character of 

 the series of phenomena with which it deals. 



Such an analysis can be called scientific only by an extension 

 of the term which strikes at the very root of the characteristic 

 which science has consistently striven to maintain as its essential 

 basis. By this statement only a qualitative distinction between 

 these two fields of investigation is intended, without (it should 

 be needless to say) any thought derogatory to the dignity or value 

 of historical study. The history of men and of nations is of absorb- 

 ing interest to the psychologist, and affords material for many 

 sciences, economical, political, psychological, and social, but 

 these are not history, which, whether its subject be an individual 

 or a social group, whether it be a person or an institution, whether 



