Lamprecht’s Method 541 
19. I have dwelt on the fundamental ideas of Lamprecht, because 
they are not yet widely known in England, and because his system is 
the ablest product of the sociological school of historians. It carries 
the more weight as its author himself is a historical specialist, and 
his historical syntheses deserve the most careful consideration. But 
there is much in the process of development which on such 
assumptions is not explained, especially the initiative of individuals. 
Historical development does not proceed in a right line, without the 
choice of diverging. Again and again, several roads are open to it, 
of which it chooses one—why? On Lamprecht’s method, we may be 
able to assign the conditions which limit the psychical activity of men 
at a particular stage of evolution, but within those limits the indi- 
vidual has so many options, such a wide room for moving, that the 
definition of those conditions, the “ psychical diapasons,” is only part 
of the explanation of the particular development. The heel of 
Achilles in all historical speculations of this class has been the role 
of the individual. 
The increasing prominence of economic history has tended to 
encourage the view that history can be explained in terms of general 
concepts or types. Marx and his school based their theory of human 
development on the conditions of production, by which, according to 
them, all social movements and historical changes are entirely con- 
trolled. The leading part which economic factors play in Lamprecht’s 
system is significant, illustrating the fact that economic changes 
admit most readily this kind of treatment, because they have been 
less subject to direction or interference by individual pioneers. 
Perhaps it may be thought that the conception of social environ- 
ment (essentially psychical), on which Lamprecht’s “psychical 
diapasons” depend, is the most valuable and fertile conception that 
the historian owes to the suggestion of the science of biology—the 
conception of all particular historical actions and movements as 
(1) related to and conditioned by the social environment, and 
(2) gradually bringing about a transformation of that environment. 
But no given transformation can be proved to be necessary (pre- 
determined). And types of development do not represent laws ; 
their meaning and value lie in the help they may give to the 
historian, in investigating a certain period of civilisation, to enable 
him to discover the interrelations among the diverse features which 
it presents. They are, as some one has said, an instrument of 
heuretic method. 
20. The men engaged in special historical researches—which 
have been pursued unremittingly for a century past, according to 
scientific methods of investigating evidence (initiated by Wolf, 
Niebuhr, Ranke)—have for the most part worked on the assumptions 
