540 Darwinism and History 



18. Among the evolutional attempts to subsume the course of 

 history under general syntheses, perhaps the most important is that 

 of Lamprecht, whose " kulturhistorische Methode," which he has 

 deduced from and applied to German history, exhibits the (indirect) 

 influence of the Comtist school. It is based upon psychology, which, 

 in his view, holds among the sciences of mind {Geisteswissenschaften) 

 the same place (that of a Grundwissenschaft) which mechanics holds 

 among the sciences of nature. History, by the same comparison, 

 corresponds to biology, and, according to him, it can only become 

 scientific if it is reduced to general concepts {Begriffe). Historical 

 movements and events are of a psychical character, and Lamprecht 

 conceives a given phase of civilisation as "a collective psychical 

 condition (seelischer Gesamtzustand)" controlling the period, "a 

 diapason which penetrates all psychical phenomena and thereby all 

 historical events of the time 1 ." He has worked out a series of such 

 phases, "ages of changing psychical diapason," in his Deutsche 

 Geschichte, with the aim of showing that all the feelings and actions 

 of each age can be explained by the diapason ; and has attempted to 

 prove that these diapasons are exhibited in other social developments, 

 and are consequently not singular but typical. He maintains further 

 that these ages succeed each other in a definite order ; the principle 

 being that the collective psychical development begins with the 

 homogeneity of all the individual members of a society and, through 

 heightened psychical activity, advances in the form of a continually in- 

 creasing differentiation of the individuals (this is akin to the Spencerian 

 formula). This process, evolving psychical freedom from psychical 

 constraint, exhibits a series of psychical phenomena which define 

 successive periods of civilisation. The process depends on two simple 

 principles, that no idea can disappear without leaving behind it an 

 effect or influence, and that all psychical life, whether in a person or 

 a society, means change, the acquisition of new mental contents. It 

 follows that the new have to come to terms with the old, and this 

 leads to a synthesis which determines the character of a new age. 

 Hence the ages of civilisation are defined as the " highest concepts 

 for subsuming without exception all psychical phenomena of the 

 development of human societies, that is, of all historical events 2 ." 

 Lamprecht deduces the idea of a special historical science, which 

 might be called "historical ethnology," dealing with the ages of 

 civilisation, and bearing the same relation to (descriptive or narrative) 

 history as ethnology to ethnography. Such a science obviously 

 corresponds to Comte's social dynamics, and the comparative method, 

 on which Comte laid so much emphasis, is the principal instrument 

 of Lamprecht. 



1 Die kulturhistorische Methode, Berlin, 1900, p. 26. 2 Ibid. pp. 28, 29. 





