Condorcet ; Hegel; Comte 533 
7. The idea of development assumed another form in the 
speculations of German idealism. Hegel conceived the successive 
periods of history as corresponding to the ascending phases or ideas 
in the self-evolution of his Absolute Being. His Lectures on the 
Philosophy of History were published in 1837 after his death. His 
philosophy had a considerable effect, direct and indirect, on the 
treatment of history by historians, and although he was superficial 
and unscientific himself in dealing with historical phenomena, he 
contributed much towards making the idea of historical development 
familiar. Ranke was influenced, if not by Hegel himself, at least by 
the Idealistic philosophies of which Hegel’s was the greatest. He 
was inclined to conceive the stages in the process of history as marked 
by incarnations, as it were, of ideas, and sometimes speaks as if the 
ideas were independent forces, with hands and feet. But while Hegel 
determined his ideas by a priori logic, Ranke obtained his by induc- 
tion—by a strict investigation of the phenomena; so that he was 
scientific in his method and work, and was influenced by Hegelian 
prepossessions only in the kind of significance which he was disposed 
to ascribe to his results. It is to be noted that the theory of Hegel 
implied a judgment of value; the movement was a progress towards 
perfection. 
8. In France, Comte approached the subject from a different 
side, and exercised, outside Germany, a far wider influence than 
Hegel. The 4th volume of his Cours de philosophie positive, which 
appeared in 1839, created sociology and treated history as a part of 
this new science, namely as “social dynamics.” Comte sought the key 
for unfolding historical development, in what he called the social- 
psychological point of view, and he worked out the two ideas which 
had been enunciated by Condorcet: that the historian’s attention 
should be directed not, as hitherto, principally to eminent individuals, 
but to the collective behaviour of the masses, as being the most 
important element in the process; and that, as in nature, so in 
history, there are general laws, necessary and constant, which con- 
dition the development. The two points are intimately connected, 
for it is only when the masses are moved into the foreground that 
regularity, uniformity, and law can be conceived as applicable. To 
determine the social-psychological laws which have controlled the 
development is, according to Comte, the task of sociologists and 
historians. 
fact that the individual components of the former, namely the cells, are morphologically 
as well as functionally differentiated, whereas the individuals which compose a society are 
morphologically homogeneous and only functionally differentiated. The resemblances 
and the differences are worked out in E. de Majewski’s striking book, La Science de la 
Civilisation, Paris, 1908. 
