THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 145 



must be collected, and connected, before they can be interpreted; 

 but I cannot imagine the slightest theoretical importance in a collec- 

 tion of facts or sequences of facts, unless they mean something in 

 terms of reason, unless we can hope to determine their vital con- 

 nection in the whole system of reality. This is the fundamental 

 truth underlying Macaulay's rather drastic remark that "facts are 

 the dross of history." 



It is to be observed that the idea of history as a self-centred 

 study for its own sake arose without any consciousness of further 

 implications, without any overt reference to philosophical theory or 

 the systematization of knowledge. It appeared as an axiom which 

 at once recommended itself as part of the general revolutionary 

 tendency of every branch of knowledge to emancipate itself from 

 external control and manage its own concerns. While this idea 

 was gaining ground, a large number of interpretations or "philo- 

 sophies" of history were launched upon the world, from Germany, 

 France, England, and elsewhere. They were nearly all constructed 

 by philosophers, not by historians; they were consequently con- 

 ditioned by the nature of the various philosophical systems from 

 which they were generated; and they did a great deal to bring the 

 general idea of a philosophy of history into discredit and create the 

 suspicion that such an idea is illusory. I observe with interest that 

 this Congress, in the Department of Philosophy, assigns a section 

 to the Philosophy of Religion but not to the Philosophy of History. 

 I feel, therefore, the less compunction, that my argument compels 

 me to make some remarks about it here. 



I need hardly remind you that the radical defect of all these 

 philosophical reconstructions of history is that the framework is 

 always made a priori, with the help of a superficial induction. The 

 principles of development are superimposed upon the phenomena, 

 instead of being given by the phenomena; and the authors of the 

 schemes had no thorough or penetrative knowledge of the facts 

 which they undertook to explain. Bossuet boldly built his theory 

 of universal history on the hardly disguised axiom that mankind 

 was created for the sake of the Church; but nearly all the specu- 

 lative theories of historical development framed in the nineteenth 

 century, though less crudely subjective, fall into the same kind of 

 fallacy. 



Two of the most notable attempts to trace the rational element 

 in the general movement of humanity were those of Hegel and 

 Krause. They are both splendid failures, Hegel's more manifestly so. 

 They are both marked by an insufficient knowledge of facts and 

 details, but in imposing his a priori framework Hegel is far more 

 mercilessly Procrustean than Krause. It was the modern period 

 which suffered most painfully through Hegel's attempt to screw his- 



