114 MEDIEVAL HISTORY 



associations, abbreviating, rounding off, and admitting of outer 

 influences and inner prejudices; in a word, memory is the artist that 

 individualizes and remodels its subject. For what else is idealism 

 but the retrospective treatment of a theme into which the personal 

 note enters, r indeed with intention, whereby the floodgates are 

 opened to the whole intellectual current of personality proper? 

 Hence in higher states of culture, in the case of differentiated indi- 

 viduals, the personal style arises, and with it the personal work of 

 art; while in lower states of culture, with individuals of similar 

 proportions, and from the simultaneous work of the many, the im- 

 personal, the typical time-style will arise, and with it the art work 

 of this particular style. 



This explains, then, for the beginnings of historical tradition the 

 growth of naturalistic and realistic forms side by side. As a natural- 

 istic form there appears by preference the genealogy; as idealistic, 

 the heroic poem. And with this the roots of the contention of ages 

 are laid bare as to whether an historical work is a work of art or not. 

 It will always be a work of art in so far as, even in naturalistic trans- 

 mission, at least in higher cultural stages, the influence of personal 

 elements cannot be avoided. And it will be peculiarly a work of art 

 as soon as, in the case of an important theme, the imagination can 

 bring forth a composition by means of idealizing retrospection. So 

 that, when the de lege ferenda is uttered, one can only advise that 

 to every historical work of our time, not only unconsciously but 

 consciously, the character of a work of art should be given. 



But genealogy and the epic are not the only forms of individual- 

 psychic tradition. Together with them and with increasing cultural 

 growth and intellectual leisure, others come to the fore. If it be 

 possible to follow the progress of human events not only through 

 the forms of tradition, as required in genealogy and epic poetry, but 

 more intensively by means of the written letter, the chisel, and the 

 stylus, pedigrees and epics will be superseded if, indeed, they do 

 not disappear at once by annals and chronicles. And even these 

 forms can be improved upon. In the history of every human com- 

 munity, the inevitable moment comes in which reason, based on 

 increasing experience, attempts independently to classify and con- 

 trol the world of phenomena, in which the logical conclusion begins 

 gradually to yield to induction, and the miraculous to the causal 

 principle; and if, with this, there begins a really scientific mastery 

 of the outward world, then this too takes hold of historical tradi- 

 tion. And the direction it follows is both naturalistic and idealistic. 



In the first instance tradition is ransacked for new sources; when 

 found, these are brought to light in a clear-cut literary form. With 

 untiring zeal the whole field is worked over, and a careful considera- 

 tion of isolated events is entered upon, of which the object is to show 



