204 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 



and a certain period, Jakob Burckhardt has given us a history of 

 civilization of the Italian Renaissance, and Gustav Freitag, in a 

 different manner, descriptions of life in the period of the German 

 Reformation and in the following centuries. And what the his- 

 torian Schlosser feebly attempted in his History of the World has 

 become in Lamprecht's 1 hands the foundation of universal history, 

 while economic history, after Biedermann's beginning, in his Economic 

 History of Germany in the Eighteenth Century, and especially in von 

 Inama-Sternegg's ambitious Economic History, is clearly aiming to 

 describe the development of economic life from the standpoint of 

 the economist. The way has thus been shown, and it will undoubtedly 

 be pursued with growing success in the immediate future. 



But the position of our science in method and aims will best 

 become apparent if we compare it with the mother science, with 

 history itself, which has hitherto regarded the political side of human 

 development as its essential and indeed sole material. It confined 

 itself to the history of the state and therefore fulfilled only one part 

 of the task which is set for it to-day. It is a tendency of human 

 nature to pass from one extreme to another, and after neglecting to 

 excess the economic and social factors there is now a widespread 

 movement to take them as the starting-point and essential founda- 

 tion of all historical science. It will therefore be necessary to weigh 

 carefully in order to find the true mean. But no one any longer 

 denies that for a proper understanding of political events a know- 

 ledge of social and economic conditions is also necessary. 



A sure basis for decision will, it seems to me, be found at once 

 by recognizing unreservedly that each advance in civilization has 

 been possible only in and through a well-ordered state, that the 

 formation of the state has been the most important and significant 

 expression of the grade of civilization at all periods, just as on the 

 other hand the state has exercised the most far-reaching influence 

 upon social and economic life. It was, therefore, only natural that 

 the organization of the state and political activity should have 

 been made the chief subject of historical study, particularly as 

 these most attracted attention and were most easily described. 

 Difficulties arose when the next step was undertaken, and the attempt 

 was made to explain the motives of political action by investigating 

 natural conditions, by analyzing the psychology of leading per- 

 sonalities, and by studying the character of the population upon 

 and through which these leaders had acted. For not with every 

 people could Csesar, Frederick the Great, or Napoleon have achieved 

 the same results; furthermore, the same people, the same race, has 

 been at different stages of its progress capable of very different 

 degrees of accomplishment; every period has its own conception 

 1 Zur'jilngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, vols. i and n. Freiburg, 1903. 



