The Genetic conception of History 531 
3. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the meaning 
of genetic history was fully realised. “Genetic” perhaps is as good 
a word as can be found for the conception which in this century 
was applied to so many branches of knowledge in the spheres both 
of nature and of mind. It does not commit us to the doctrine 
proper of evolution, nor yet to any teleological hypothesis such as is 
implied in “progress.” For history it meant that the present con- 
dition of the human race is simply and strictly the result of a causal 
series (or set of causal series)—a continuous succession of changes, 
where each state arises causally out of the preceding ; and that the 
business of historians is to trace this genetic process, to explain each 
change, and ultimately to grasp the complete development of the life 
of humanity. Three influential writers, who appeared at this stage and 
helped to initiate a new period of research, may specially be mentioned. 
Ranke in 1824 definitely repudiated the pragmatical view which 
ascribes to history the duties of an instructress, and with no less 
decision renounced the function, assumed by the historians of the 
Aufklirung, to judge the past; it was his business, he said, 
merely to show how things really happened. Niebuhr was already 
working in the same spirit and did more than any other writer to 
establish the principle that historical transactions must be related to 
the ideas and conditions of their age. Savigny about the same time 
founded the “historical school” of law. He sought to show that law 
was not the creation of an enlightened will, but grew out of custom 
and was developed by a series of adaptations and rejections, thus 
applying the conception of evolution. He helped to diffuse the 
notion that all the institutions of a society or a nation are as closely 
interconnected as the parts of a living organism. 
4, The conception of the history of man as a causal development 
meant the elevation of historical inquiry to the dignity of a science. 
Just as the study of bees cannot become scientific so long as the 
student’s interest in them is only to procure honey or to derive moral 
lessons from the labours of “the little busy bee,” so the history of 
human societies cannot become the object of pure scientific investiga- 
tion so long as man estimates its value in pragmatical scales. Nor 
can it become a science until it is conceived as lying entirely within 
a sphere in which the law of cause and effect has unreserved and 
unrestricted dominion. On the other hand, once history is envisaged 
as a causal process, which contains within itself the explanation of 
the development of man from his primitive state to the point which 
he has reached, such a process necessarily becomes the object of 
scientific investigation and the interest in it is scientific curiosity. 
At the same time, the instruments were sharpened and refined. 
Here Wolf, a philologist with historical instinct, was a pioneer. 
34—2 
