540 Darwinism and History 
18. Among the evolutional attempts to subsume the course of 
history under general syntheses, perhaps the most important is that 
of Lamprecht, whose “kulturhistorische Methode,” which he has 
deduced from and applied to German history, exhibits the (indirect) 
influence of the Comtist school. It is based upon psychology, which, 
in his view, holds among the sciences of mind (Geisteswissenschaften) 
the same place (that of a Graumdwissenschaft) which mechanics holds 
among the sciences of nature. History, by the same comparison, 
corresponds to biology, and, according to him, it can only become 
scientific if it is reduced to general concepts (Begriffe). Historical 
movements and events are of a psychical character, and Lamprecht 
conceives a given phase of civilisation as “a collective psychical 
condition (seelischer Gesamtzustand)” controlling the period, “a 
diapason which penetrates all psychical phenomena and thereby all 
historical events of the time” He has worked out a series of such 
phases, “ages of changing psychica] diapason,”’ in his Deutsche 
Geschichte, with the aim of showing that all the feelings and actions 
of each age can be explained by the diapason ; and has attempted to 
prove that these diapasons are exhibited in other social developments, 
and are consequently not singular but typical. He maintains further 
that these ages succeed each other in a definite order ; the principle 
being that the collective psychical development begins with the 
homogeneity of all the individual members of a society and, through 
heightened psychical activity, advances in the form of a continually in- 
creasing differentiation of the individuals (this‘is akin to the Spencerian 
formula). This process, evolving psychical freedom from psychical 
constraint, exhibits a series of psychical phenomena which define 
successive periods of civilisation. The process depends on two simple 
principles, that no idea can disappear without leaving behind it an 
effect or influence, and that all psychical life, whether in a person or 
a society, means change, the acquisition of new mental contents. It 
follows that the new have to come to terms with the old, and this 
leads to a synthesis which determines the character of a new age. 
Hence the ages of civilisation are defined as the “ highest concepts 
for subsuming without exception all psychical phenomena of the 
development of human societies, that is, of all historical events®.” 
Lamprecht deduces the idea of a special historical science, which 
might be called “historical ethnology,” dealing with the ages of 
civilisation, and bearing the same relation to (descriptive or narrative) 
history as ethnology to ethnography. Such a science obviously 
corresponds to Comte’s social dynamics, and the comparative method, 
on which Comte laid so much emphasis, is the principal instrument 
of Lamprecht. 
1 Die kulturhistorische Methode, Berlin, 1900, p. 26. 2 Ibid. pp. 28, 29. 
