Page:Prolegomena to history- the relation of history to literature, philosophy, and science (IA prolegomentohist00teggiala).pdf/128

 the destinies of the entire human race, and inevitably incorporates in his construction an answer of some sort to the question, "What does it all mean?" Thus consciously or unconsciously he arrives at the standpoint of Philosophy, and wittingly or unwittingly essays an explanation of its central problem; and Professory Bury quite properly reaches the conclusion that, as history-writers, "our apprehension of history and our reason for studying it must be ultimately determined by the view we entertain of the moles et machina mundi as a whole."

Nevertheless, high as we may rate the practice of historiography, neither as art nor as philosophy does it set problems for research or provide an outlet for the energies and ambitions of modern investigators. The work of art or the philosophical explanation, once created, lives on as a monument, independent of any subsequent extension of knowledge, to give pleasure or excite admiration, to be praised or condemned, as the case maybe but as an obstacle, not as an incitement, to further research. So the future progress of historical investigation turns upon the possibility of scholars being able to free their work from the domination of historiography.

But the aim of nineteenth century scholarship to investigate the history of mankind without prepossessions is not to be abandoned merely because the proper mode for the statement of its results has not yet been achieved. The failure of "history" to become a science has been due primarily to the subordination of investigation to history-writing, and, knowing this, the failure may be retrieved if the investigator will cease merely to declare that "history is a science," and set himself consciously to apply scientific methods to the subject-matter with which he is concerned. Science, as we have seen, is the systematic investigation of the processes manifested in phenomena, and this is the only method that can satisfy the ambition, or provide an outlet for the activity of the investigator.

The contrast here emphasised has long been recognized in at least one of the specialised fields of historical inquiry. Speaking of the course of philological study in the nineteenth century, Hanns Oertel says: "By