The Presuppositions of Critical History

 

By F.H. Bradley

Note: this text was typed up as quickly as possible and is sure to contain various typing errors.

            In the world the mind makes for the manifestation of itself, where its life in the process of its own self-realization, there the action and the knowledge of it are children, the hours of whose bringings-forth are never the same, and whose births are divided. Alike in the life of mankind and in the development of the individual, the deed comes first, and later the reflection; and it is with the question, ‘What have I done?’ that we awake to facts accomplished and never intended, and to existences we do not recognize, while we own them as the creation of ourselves. For a people on in the period of their stagnation, for a person only when the character and the station have become fixed for ever, and when the man is made, is it possible to foreknow the truth of the fresh achievement; and where progress has its full meaning, and evolution is more than a phrase, there the present is hard and the future impossible to discern. Unborn in the substance of the present there lies, it is true, and there lives that future: but the unborn is hidden as yet from the light, and the womb is secret, and the presage doubtful; and the morning of the child’s naming is divided by many days from the darkness of begetting and night of travail.

            The sudden act of a moment is unveiled, it may be, to the gradual consciousness of advancing age; and there are seasons again when the slow drift of years comes home with a flash of sweet or sombre revelation; or it may be again that of these experiences neither is given for the time to humanity.

            Neither the projection nor the recognition of reality are always the work of an hour; for there are periods when gathering tendencies and accumulation of changes copy their alterations in an altering reflection, when another day dawns through longer twilight, and another world more slowly steals on the sense, with its images so strange yet so familiar, and another man wakens through uncertain recollection to the same and yet to a new self-consciousness.

            It has been thus with the growth of the critical mind. It fought in the name of another, and not in its own name; it has conquered before it set itself to the battle; and it was first in the making of its realm that it grasped the secret of its mission. The feeling of itself as power came before the knowledge of its purpose, and the passing of the power into act disclosed to it first its own nature. But the advance of its action was gradual, and the consciousness of itself was of equal growth, and with a tardy revelation followed the steps of a slow development.

            Within the memory of to-day it has been that historical criticism has asserted and has made good an unabated claim; and with a sudden tide of success has risen to the consciousness of its unabridged mission. With the knowledge of itself it now knows also the purpose of its existence, and the reality which, in the field of its endeavour, belongs to itself and to itself alone.

            Criticism has become self-conscious: but to be aware of its aims and the character of its work is one thing; it is another thing to attempt to comprehend the conditions of its being, and the justification of its empire. Such justification it is which historical criticism now mostly needs; for that criticism cannot, except by its actions, justify itself. Confided as it is to one limited sphere, to reflect on the grounds of its existence is for it to pass beyond that sphere; and the principles which regulate its practice are thus, because it cannot account for them, its presuppositions.

            This is the subject of that which follows in these pages, and these pages will, so far as possible, be limited to this alone. Now, however much at first sight it may appear so, will it be found an easy task to investigate the principles of critical history. It is a hard matter, because neither do we know at the outset what we mean by ‘critical’, nor shall we learn even at the end what history in general is, nor even assure ourselves of the fact of its existence. We here have enough, and, it may be, more than enough of considerations on history and on the ‘science of history’, with its actual or possible or impossible reality; but the question, ‘When we use the word history what do we mean by it?’ is, it would seem, too simple or too trifling a problem to stay the course of our ‘advanced thinkers’. And yet the man who, feeling himself unequal alike to support that position or that tile, is contented simply, so far as he can, to think, knows all too well that question, and knows it as involving the most difficult problems which philosophy can solve or discuss. Such a man, whatever may be his school, or whatever his principles, will not I know take it amiss in me that I confess at this point my inability, and seek to impose neither on myself, nor on his understanding, nor on the ignorance of the public. And so to begin―

 

            It has been often remarked that, by whichever of the terms now in use we express it, history has still a double meaning. ‘Geschichte’ does not simply stand for ‘Was gescheiht’, and [Greek word] would not merit its name were it nothing beyond the inquiries of the historian. Starting from different sides these words are extended, each to the same totality, by a broad or, if anyone pleases, by a loose signification.

            It might, I believe, be maintained plausible, and perhaps even with serious conviction, that these two elements, that of events in time on the one side and, on the other side, that of recollection in the mind, were in history necessarily united; in this sense that a bare series of momentary occurrences cannot contain that without which history has no right to be named as history.

            But such a discussion lies beyond our subject, and we must be content here both to assume an historical past of humanity, in the absence even of a recording subject, and to leave the assertion of a merely ‘objective’ history of Nature to stand or to fall untouched by us.

            We do not question that history apart from the historian does exist; and contrariwise we must take it for granted that there is no such thing as history which is merely ‘subjective’, or, in other words, that whatever is ‘created’ by the historian is not in a proper sense history at all.

            For that history as a whole has been so ‘made’, that in it we have nothing but a series of projections of present consciousness in the form of a story of past events, from time to time gathered up or abolished in a larger and more inclusive projection―this has, so far as I know, been upheld by no sober-minded man, nor could be: it is only the exceptional writings of particular periods of which such an account can be given, and scarcely even then without any modification.

            But, be this as it may be, we refuse the name of history to such a production, and we assume that through history (Geschichte) may exist, where the writing of real history ([Greek word]) does not exist, yet, where there is no real past, there also there is properly speaking no historian, nor any writing of history.

            In what follows we have nothing to do with history as it is not forth the historian: history presupposes, in its title of ‘critical’, the presence alike of the so-called ‘objective’ and the so-called ‘subjective’ elements; and it is only as involving both that we intend in future to use or to discuss the word.

            In this sense (to touch at length on our proper inquiry) history stands not only for that which has been, but also for that which is; not only for the past in fact, but also for the present in record; and it implies in itself the union of these two elements: it implies, on the one hand, that what once lived in its own right lives now only as the object of knowledge, and on the other hand that the knowledge which now is possesses no title to existence save in right of that object, and though itself present, yet draws it entire reality from the perished past.

            Stated thus the facts would appear to force us to a grave consideration; but the problems are hard to those alone who make them so, and to account for the conjunction of so diverse attributes has seemed (it is well known), and still seems to the earliest reflection, no difficult task. The explanation is simple. Knowledge is the reception of outward impressions, and it is but natural that the copy should resemble and reproduce the original. And if that which, independent of any act of judgement, was first learned be in like manner simply and honestly written down, surely this copy of a copy is still, undistorted by so transparent a medium, and true to the mould its original has shaped, the living imprint and the faithful though uncoloured likeness of the full reality?

            Such is the view natural to the uncritical mind, and according  to this history has no presuppositions, and indeed can have none: her province is to recall, and not to construct; she wishes to take the truth as it is, not to make it what it should be; and she demands from the historian the surrender of his judgement to the decree of the ages, not the projection of his desires and fancies into a region for ever passed from the limit of creation, dead to the action and the storm of life, whose tranquil expanse no breath of thought can ruffle, and where the charm is broken when the mirror is moved.

            The theory is simple, and it may be pleasing, but it is no more than a theory; and could we, as we cannot, be blind to the difficulties which beset it from within, yet it is doomed to perish, for in its own practical application it exposes its own falsity and reveals its own illusion.

            We ask for history, and that means that we ask for the simple record of unadulterated facts; we look, and nowhere do we find the object of our search, but in its stead we see the divergent accounts of a host of jarring witnesses, a chaos of disjoined and discrepant narrations, and yet, while all of these can by no possibility be received as true, at the same time not one of them can be rejected as false.

            But the consciousness, for which testimony is the reproduction of a passive print, is at this point not resourceless. ‘The pure rays of truth,’ we are told, ‘are discoloured by the various media through which they pass, and it is the task of the historian to correct the refraction of one medium by that of another, and in this manner to arrive at the bare and uncoloured history.’ But the historian, if such be his mission, is not and cannot be merely receptive, or barely reproductive. It is true that he may not actually add any new material of his own, and yet his action, in so far as he realized that which never as such has been given him, implies a preconception, and denotes in a sense a foregone conclusion. The straightening of the crooked rests on the knowledge of the straight, and the exercise of criticism requires a canon.

            This is not the only difficulty which historical writing in its practice brings to the theory of passivity. There remains on the contrary another of equal weight. When the records of a bygone age have been all collected, and, so far as possible, brought into harmony, yet at this point the task of history does not cease. Writer after write in rapid succession takes up the never-exhausted theme, and, when no new fact is left to discover, there still remains the ceaseless endeavour more and more thoroughly to apprehend the old material, the passion of the mind to be at home in its object, the longing to think the thing as it is in itself, and as all men have failed to think it before. With every fresh standing-ground gained by the growth of experience, with every rise of the spirit to a fuller life, comes another view of the far-lying past from a higher and a new level, and a fresh and corresponding change in the features of the object recognized. Impotent to deny the existence of these facts, and powerless to explain them, the uncritical consciousness refuses to advance, or advancing loses all hold on reality. It is forced to see in the place of its reproduction an origination, in the place of its witness a writer of fiction, in the places of its fact a theory, and its consistent issue is the barren scepticism which sees in history but a weary labyrinth of truth and tangled falsehood, whose clue is buried and lost in the centuries that lie behind.

            An issue consistent, and indeed for a space necessary; but inevitable to none except those alone who through helplessness and doubt have set their faces towards the truth. To the double-minded seeker, to the man who, though fain to win, has no heart to stake his possessions, in this sphere at least there is no inevitable conclusion. He justifies his belief in anything by his right to be convinced of nothing; yet for a present pleasure he forgoes his inheritance, and buys his immunity at the cost of slavery.

            In view of the futility of such an outcome―not finding a solution in the metaphor of a crude reflection, <and> unable to remain in the doubt of scepticism or to sink to the dogma of despair―it remains to us once again to take up the question abandoned thus by the uncritical mind, and, with patience if not with hope, at least to attempt to exhibit it in a truer form. The heading, ‘Presuppositions of Critical History’, expresses briefly the doctrine which is the opposite of the uncritical, and anticipates the result that a history without so-called prejudications is a mere delusion, that what does everywhere exist is history founded upon them, and what ought to exist is history with true preconceptions consistently developed throughout the entire field.

            But, to take up the problem from the beginning, we must return once more to the uncritical mind, and to its doctrine or its metaphor concerning the historical tradition. The ultimate element in the field of history is, as before remarked, presented and necessarily presented to its by that stage of reflection as a so-called ‘fact’, the imprint of which is on the part of the witness passively received and preserved: that which brought itself to the observation, and, in the absence of direct falsehood on the part of the narrator, remains as a simple and indecomposable material. This is the theory of simple reproduction, a view to be met with not solely in the world of common sense: the psychology of the people has made it its own, and consecrated it in the name and with the title of philosophy, and still we are assured with the complacency of an absolute certitude that in perception the mind is passive, and that the final elements of knowledge are the facts conveyed through the senses.

            Into the fullness of the problem raised by sensationalism, into the truth which underlies this ‘metaphor now hardened into a dogma’, we are not prepared, nor indeed is it necessary, to enter here. We will content ourselves on the general question with the remark, that in the act of perception it is no doubt true that the mind is at the same time passive. But to say this is to say one thing, and it is quite another things to talk of sensations (in the signification of bare feelings) as though in themselves, and apart from the activity of the mind, they existed as objects of consciousness. That is assert that a mere feeling is sufficient to constitute by itself the minimum required for knowledge and reality, and the proof of this assertion has been, is, and ever will be wanting. It cannot exist since the proof or even the assertion is a sheer self-contradiction; and it is a self-contradiction for the following reason. An assertion, and much more so a proof, is intellectual; it is a judgement which implies the exercise of the understanding. They must be objects for the intellect; in a word, intelligible. But the essence of mere sensation was the entire absence of the intellection, and hence to make one single affirmation with respect to sensation, as sensation, is to treat as relative to the understanding that which is supposed to exclude the understanding; and this is a contradiction.

            To pursue with the reason an object which when found is to be irrational, to think the opposite of thought while fixes as opposite, to comprehend the incomprehensible yet without transforming it―such is the task of that which calls itself the ‘philosophy of experience’. It is the pursuit of a phantom for ever doomed to fade in our embraces, a mocking shadow beyond the horizon of our grasp, known to us as the unreality of all that we can hold, and whose existence must perish at the threshold of human possession.

            Yet let this be as it may. We are not concerned to ascertain the nature of that which may be regarded as the minimum of fact in general. The object of our inquiry is history, and specially here the ultimate material of the historical field; and we wish to know not what makes any fact, but what makes an historical fact, and what it is without which nothing can rightly be called by that name. We have to inquire in short what it is that in history and for history is required for the existence of its historical matter, and what it is that, be it what it may be in itself, yet can never enter as a member into the narrative of the past.

            The facts which exist for critical history are events and recorded events. They are recorded, and that is to say that, although the work of the mind, they now at any rate are no mere feelings, nor generally the private contents of this or that man’s consciousness, but are fixed and made outward, permanent, and accessible to the minds of all men. Failing to be thus they have failed to be for history, and history can never be for them. And they are events, and that is to say that each is no simple and uncompounded unit, but contains within itself a motion and a passage, a transition and a connexion between elements—<i.e. they are> relations, the members of which may be distinguished though they cannot be divided. They are recorded events, and that means that, though fleeting in themselves, they are yet made stable, though divisible in time, they are regarded as wholes; and though the offspring of the mind, they are still independent and real.

            Such are the characteristics of historical facts considered in themselves. We must regard them now in their relation to the individual witness or recorder. Let us view them as the objects of his consciousness, and ask what are they? and what function of the mind corresponds to them?

            To solve this problem in a short space is scarcely practicable, and to ensure brevity we must be willing here to seem, it may be, contented with assertion.

            There cannot be mere feelings. A chaos of sensations has no unity, and hence cannot properly be called a succession; nor, even when re-collected as a sequence of feelings in me, can it yet express an outward change in things. In a word, from feeling to the record of an occurrence there is, and there can be, no natural passage.

            If we recall the characteristics of the narrated event, in the first place it will be clear that they presuppose in the mind both association and recognition of association: association, as that which separates (distinguishes), and at the same time conjoins; and recognition, as that which is aware of the divisible unity as a concrete whole. They require the action of that faculty which separates subject from the object, and one thing from another thing, while it yet remains the bond of their unity. In a word, they testify to the presence of judgement. A feeling is at most; it is neither real nor unreal, true nor false: but every occurrence has or has not taken place, and ever judgement professes, although it may fail, to express the actual.

            The historical event (in our limited sense of the word history) involves in the first place a judgement. It is ‘objective’, it is distinguished in itself, and yet it is a whole.

            But in the second place it involves much more than what we call simple judgement. If we take the simplest historical fact, and reflect on the complex nature of the transition it attempts to express, it is clear to us that we are concerned with a number of judgements, the multitude of which wearies our attempts at analysis. And it is not less clear that these many judgements are united, and, as it were, resolved in a single judgement which answers to the whole event.

            This one judgement comprehends in itself the many judgements; it must be looked on as their result, or in others words it is a conclusion.          

            The historical fact then (for us) is a conclusion; and a conclusion, however it may appear so, is never the fiction of a random invention. We bring to its assertion the formed world of existing beliefs, and the new matter of a fresh instance. They are grounds for our position, and we know them as such, or at least we may know them. For everything that we say we think we have reasons, our realities are built up of explicit or hidden inferences; in a single word, our facts are inferential, and their actuality depends on the correctness of the reasoning which makes them what they are.

            Such is (or seems to be) the constitution of the narrated event; and if its statement is a paradox, it is at least no new one. The evidence which the result lacks here will perhaps not be required by the reader; but in any case, so far as what follows is concerned, he must look for at most a further illustration.

 

            To resume the discussion. In the case of the most straightforward witness deposition to the most ordinary circumstance contains in every instance the recognition of the previously known under fresh features and with new particulars: it involves inferential judgement; inferences of substance and attribute, of cause and effect; and, if the inference is false, the fact is unreal. It is a matter of the most ordinary experience that the mediated and complex should appear immediate and simple. We see what we perceive; and the object of our perceptions is qualified by the premises of our knowledge, by our previous experiences. Not only to the child is the novel picture identified with a familiar image, but to each and all of us an uncertain shape is defined on a sudden as a particular object, or the tremor of a feature conveys the motion of the soul—and all by what seems at the moment a mere communication of the senses.

            Yet it is a proverb that in everything a man may be mistaken: and the reflection (when we do reflect) upon our errors brings home to us the conviction that we are wrong only because we judge, and that without this condition of both error and truth existence would be for us impossible.

            If we go to the strongest facts, to the best attested events as they are proved in our law courts, we are forced still to admit that there are no facts as to which mistake is impossible; and in every case the mistake rests upon a mistaken inference. But, as we have said, it is the merest illusion to suppose that the entire abstinence from or the total removal of inference is a guarantee for certainty and truth. The best witnesses are those who from long habit have attained to comparative infallibility in their judgements; the testimony even of a child on familiar subjects is of value; but there may be events to which its deposition is worthless, not because it makes inferences, but because it fails to make them, or makes them wrongly, and not because we cannot trust its eyesight, but because we cannot rely upon its reasoning.

            It is natural at this point to object that in cross-examination the lawyer has a means for removing the witness’s conclusions and arriving at the sensible facts. This to certain extent is true; a witness can be forced (in certain cases and down to a certain point) to recall and unwind the coil of inference which has made his events what they are. But to confine him to the facts of sense is to reduce him to a condition of impotence. If the man is to speak to anything, in the end the examination is confronted with a judgement, which cannot be called a sensible fact, and which yet defies its analysis; because, though there must be a ground, yet that cannot be recalled, since it never, as part of conscious reasoning, was explicitly before the consciousness. Here the process must cease, and the existence of the fact rests upon the veracity of the witness in other respects, and the correctness of his judgements on general subjects. But with every precaution the best witness may be mistaken; there exists no testimony entirely secured from error; and the possibility of wrong evidence implies the possibility of false reasoning; nor in any case is it explicable except on the assumption that testimony to the simplest circumstance involves and is what it is by reason of an inference.

            If it is thus where every safeguard exists, how will it be where there are none? And if the ultimate legal fact in its very nature is inferential, can we not say with still greater truth that in the realm of history we have and can have no facts whatever which do not hold in their essence and depend for their existence on inferential reasoning?

            The correctness of the isolated event as recorded rests upon a theory, and the recorded train of circumstances which makes a narrative is a still wider theory, which must depart yet farther from the fact as imagined to consist in passive sensation, and must imply together with its greater possibilities of truth and falsehood, the increased existence of active combination. We cannot recall accurately what we have not rightly observed, and rightly to observe is not to receive a series of chaotic impressions, but to grasp the course of events as a connected whole.

            It is a fact not to be lost sight of that our memories are certain only because corrigible, and have become trustworthy solely through a process of constant and habitual corrected recollection; the correction being in every case the determination of an order by fixing its elements in their proper relations and its result a mediated sequence of phenomena.

 

            We have considered the primary historic material, both as single occurrences and as series of events narrated by an original eye-witness, and what we have so far seen is this, that in the field of history it is impossible to free ourselves from reasoning, and that in every case that which is called the fact is in reality a theory. The identification (so far and in this sense) of theory and fact is the end of that stage in our discussion which we have just accomplished, but we are far as yet from our final result.

            ‘Your conclusion,’ it will be urged, ‘be it never so true, is far from justifying the historian in assumptions or presupposition. Let it be with the facts and the narratives as you will; but they come to the historian as testimony, as the experience of another, and, whatever they may be in themselves, yet for him, as he has them, they are facts; and in any case all further reasoning concerning them is frivolous.’

            The doctrine might be stated with a show of plausibility. Will it bear the test of a practical application to our daily life? I think that to accord our impartial ear indifferently to things probable and improbable, to things true and false, and for no other reason than because we do not see with the eyes and hear with the ears of others, is, if we consider it, a strange and extravagant demand.

            I am sure that we might search long and in vain through the lives of those who profess such a creed for any smallest exemplification of it; and the reflection might occur to us that there are better illustrations of a belief that all things in general are equally credible, than the violent affirmation of the dogma that some things in particular are absolutely certain.

            The common experience of reasonable beings bears us out in the assertion that we do not believe without a reason; that the fact asserted by another remains in its position, as an asserted fact, unless we have some cause to take it as true, and to make it a part of our own word: and further that this reason and ground is reasoning (if not always a rational) judgement, from the possibility or likelihood of the event and the character of the witness. The distinction between our individual experience and testimony as the experience of others is not a distinction which can have the smallest tendency to modify the conclusion we arrived at above, viz. that all our history is a matter of inference.

            The distinction moreover is to a certain extent illusory. If to say that ‘all knowledge comes from experience’ is to utter no more than ‘an empty tautology’, then it must be but a similar tautology to assert that all experience is personal experience. The teaching that it is impossible for a man to transcend his consciousness is not unfamiliar to our ears; and we have learnt the lesson (important or otherwise) that we can only know the things which we can know, and that our world will never be wider than the world which will be ours.

            It is a doctrine which often stands no more than a ground for disbelieving and believing whatever we please; but here, as against the separation of testimony from experience, it has significance. The experience of others has no meaning for us except so far as it becomes our own; the existence of others is no existence for us if it is not in our world that they live. If we know that other men are, we know it by an inferential judgement; and it is by a similar judgement that the matter of their testimony becomes ours. Both they and it can be nothing to us but parts of our experience; are made parts of it by an inference, and have no validity and no guarantee beyond that inference. To deny this is to state the opposite of a tautology, is to fall into self-contradiction.

            If nothing is ours which is not in our experience, then testimony, if known by us, must be so included: and at this point a familiar illustration may perhaps be excused as tending to throw some light on the preceding statements.

            I have met, as I imagine, a friend in the street to-day, and I note it as a fact that A has been seen by me; but this is an inference, the theory on and of certain supposed recalled sensations. I am told on the next day by an eyewitness that A died yesterday; my inferences from the character of the witness, the recognition of a narrative of the death written in the handwriting of A’s relatives, lead me to believe this. It is now a fact that A died yesterday; but this fact is again my inference: it is I that have made it a fact for me and, in case there has been a conspiracy to deceive me, it is not fact, but a false judgement of mine. What is now to become of the fact of my meeting with A? That depends on my reasoning, on my general beliefs, on my presuppositions. It may be a fact that I have seen an apparition, or the fact may be now an hallucination; but both one and the other are inferences. It would be possible to proceed much further. I might learn that a real man like A was present at the place and time. A mistake as to persons is now the fact. And it is useless here to urge the visual sensation at the given time is the ultimate reality; because, in the present application, we have seen that, let it be never so actual, history can admit no such reality into its sphere; and in the second place there need not have been such visual sensation at all. For, if there were no reason to suppose the presence of any real man, and if an hallucination were hardly possible in my case, the fact might be that my memory was disordered, and that I dated too late a former meeting with A. In short, the fact varies with my judgement, and my judgement must always be based upon and fall within my experience.

            The history then (to proceed), which is for us, is matter of inference, and in the last resort has existence as history, as a record of events, by means of an inference of our own. And this inference furthermore can never start from a background of nothing; it is never a fragmentary isolated act of our mind, but is essentially connected with, and in entire dependence on, the character of our general consciousness. And so the past varies with the present, and can never do otherwise, since it is always the present upon which it rests. This present is presupposed by it, and is its necessary preconception.

            History must ever be founded on a presupposition; and the scepticism which saw in the succession of historical writings a series of fictions, where the present was transported into the bygone age, was thus and so far justified: but the insight into the ground of the partial justification will exhibit, I hope, the source of the general mistake.

            Paley protested against that which he called a ‘prejudication’. We have seen the reason why every history is necessarily based upon prejudication; and experience testifies that, as a matter of fact, there is no single history which is not so based, which does not derive its individual character from the particular standpoint of the author. There is no such thing as a history without a prejudication; the real distinction is between the writer who has his prejudications without knowing what they are, and the writer who consciously orders and creates from the known foundation of that which for him is the truth.

            It is when history becomes aware of its presupposition that it first becomes truly critical, and protects itself (so far as is possible) from the caprices of fiction. But what, then, it will be asked, is the presupposition of criticism?

 

            The answer is not far to seek. It is plain from the whole of what has gone before that the ground of criticism is that which is the justification of inference; and an inference, it will be admitted, is justified solely on the assumption of the uniformity of nature and the course of events.

            Critical history assumes that its world is one, and that in that world it exists, and has but to demonstrate the existence of itself. Its demand is that the judgement which we found to be implicit in every historical fact become explicit, and that the whole sequence be consistently and rationally mediated. As intelligence, criticism seeks the object which already is in itself intelligible, and it realizes itself, if at all, in the form and the character which belongs to itself alone. In a word, the universality of law, and what loosely may be termed causal connexion, is the condition which makes history possible, and which, though not for her to prove, she must none the less presuppose as a principle and demonstrate as a result worked out in the whole field of her activity.

            To this extent the characteristics of history are the characteristics of (natural) science, for both carry into the particulars an anticipation which the particulars have already realized in implication: and the reason of this is that for both the fact can exist so far only as already possessed of attributed conferred on it by virtue of the principle, and can oppose the principle by no means but its own self-annihilation.

            ‘Science’, we may be told in answer, ‘is founded on experiment and not on a presupposition.’ ‘The fact of the existence of scientific experiment proves’, we must return, ‘the existence of an absolute presupposition, which it can be said to found, only because upon that itself is already founded.’ We base our action on that which action itself supports and testifies to. Unless upon the assumption of the exclusion of all interference and chance, no one could say that an experiment was of the smallest value.  The man of science cannot prove his assumption beforehand; he knows that as a fact his science exists, and that there are certain conditions necessary to its existence, and he troubles himself little (if at all) with the possibility of the falsehood of his assumption.

            Can science testify to a breach of the law which forms its presupposition? This would amount to a contradiction in terms; it would be an observation based upon a rule to prove the non-existence of the rule; it would be a deductive reasoning in which the conclusion would be a negative instance against the leading major premise. No experience could prove that A (if isolated) was at one time followed by B, at another by C; because the very apparatus of the proof rests upon the absoluteness of the principle—that is to say, the judgements necessary to support the facts of the hostile experiment are self-annihilated in virtue of the experiment’s supposed result. Science may retire from the field altogether, but while in its field it has no choice but to remain supreme.

            That science should rule its facts seems disputable only so long as we suppose the facts to be something independent. But the truth is, on the other hand, that every scientific observation and experiment involves an inference true or false, and known to be true solely in virtue of the law. The simplest possible datum which is matter of science is no mere atom, but expresses and depends upon connexions in things to which the judgement, if true, must conform. But to know that relations of thoughts express relations in things is impossible except on the formal or virtual assumption of the absolute stability of the latter relations, and the consequent assurance that a false judgement is the result of a false inference in me, and not of a shifting connexion in the world. Science does, and must control its facts, and an opposing fact is self-condemned because in every element the principle is already involved.

            We find then that, as starting from a conception which it cannot prove, natural science is, in this sense, hypothetical, and exhibits in detail the truth of its hypothesis. Returning to history, we must ask if in this respect it corresponds to science.

            That history and science (always in its English limitation to physical science) present no diversity, we are far indeed from suggesting. Unlike most branches of science history can create no experiments; and its subject-matter (we must take it for granted here) is not the same as the subject matter of science. The difference is wide, but, so far as the point above dwelt on is concerned, both science and history we find to be agreed, namely in this, that a fact which asserts itself as (loosely speaking) without a cause, or without a consequence, is no fact at all, and no better than a self-contradiction, for the reason that, while professing to exist, it abjured the sole ground of actual existence.

            But there is an objection which at this point we are certain to encounter. We shall be told that the volitions of man are uncaused, and that hence the doctrine put forth above falls to the ground. Whether, strictly speaking, causation retains a meaning when applied to the will, we need not to inquire. ‘Causation’ we use throughout in the loose sense which it bears amongst us. And into the question of the relation of freedom to law we are not obliged here to enter. For our present purpose, however, we may thus dispose of the difficulty.

            If the freedom of the will is to mean that the actions of man are subject to no law, and in this sense irrational, then the possibility of history, I think, must be allowed to disappear, and the past to become a matter of almost entire uncertainty. For, if we are precluded from counting on human nature, our hold upon tradition is gone, and with it well nigh our only basis for historical judgement.

            We find, however, the contrary is every day assumed as certain, and that where the weightiest interests are at stake, and as long as criminals are executed in many cases by right of what comes to a construction from the laws of human action, so long will there be at least no practical necessity for the discarding of historical evidence in favour of the doubts, or perhaps the dogmas, of any man.

            Thus much at present then seems to be clear—that critical history must have a presupposition, and that this presupposition is the uniformity of law. And we have accomplished here yet another stage of the present inquiry.

 

            But this, we shall be told and rightly told, is much too indefinite. No one now asserts the existence in history of events without a cause or a consequence, and the real point at issue is to determine more narrowly the character of the general principle. ‘Uniformity’, we shall be told, ‘is an empty phrase; similar causes are doubtless followed by similar effects, but in the varied field of history there are causes unlike those which present themselves in our present experience, and which consequently imply the presence of unfamiliar results.’ Upon this difficult point it is necessary to attempt to come to a clear understanding.

            We have seen that history rests in the last resort upon an inference from our experience, a judgement based upon our present state of things, upon the world personal in us; and that this is the sole means and justification which we possess for holding and regarding supposed events as real, i.e. as members in and of our universe. When therefore we are presented, as it were from the outside, with so-called ‘historical facts’, the like of which seem to stand in no relation to all that we have now in heaven or on earth; when we are asked to affirm the existence in past time of events, the effects of causes which confessedly are without analogy in the world in which we live, and which we know—we are at a loss for any other answer but this, that (so far as at present we can see) we are asked to build a house without a foundation, or with our instruments construct a work which can come into no connexion with those instruments. And how can we attempt this without contradicting ourselves?

            When further we reflect upon the range and diversity of our present experience, its width in respect to the different stages of development which it exhibits, and the continual and growing success of its attempt to find a unity in all that variety; then we find it still more impossible to accept, as the real past of our own real world, this riddle of an outer sphere, fallen amongst us down from heaven, and written in a foreign tongue.

            Our difficulty is this—we are asked to affirm the existence in history of causes such as we can find nothing analogous now in our present experience. On the other hand, it is only from our knowledge of what is that we can conclude to that which has been; and, this being so, how can we first infer from the world to the existence of historical evidence within the world, and then, starting from that, proceed out of the world, when all the time we are unable to stand except upon the basis of the world?

            And we reflect, the conclusion is borne is borne in on us (perhaps prematurely) that, upon the strength of historical evidence, to assert within the sphere of history the existence of any causes or effects, except on the conviction that there is now for us something analogous to them, is no better than self-contradiction. And it is this conclusion which after the requisite explanation (and even, as it may appear, with certain modifications) we must in the end undertake to defend.

 

            The statement seems at first sight a paradox, and is open to every kind of external counter-assertion. To these or to some of these we must in the end return, but in the meantime we have to encounter a serious internal difficulty.

            Our present point of view is as follows. A critical position towards history in general implies that the mass of historical material is no longer one with ourselves, is not any more carried about in and with us as part of the substance we feel to be natural to us, but has, as a possession, been separated from the mind, and is held apart from and over against it as an object which presents a problem for the intelligence. This object, although a possession, has not yet been appropriated; though we have it, yet we have not made it ours; and though it is intrinsically rational, yet it has not been rationalized. We have seen further that, since all certainty with respect to the past depends ultimately upon present inference, the basis and foundation for the criticism of what has been is necessarily formed by the knowledge of what is.

            The difficulty which first meets us at this point presents itself in the following question. ‘Is not that which is to be the canon of testimony itself dependent on testimony?’, i.e. does not the present knowledge of the historian rest to a considerable extent on what others have told him, and in fact consist of this in no small degree? ‘The historian’, it may be objected, ‘does perhaps as critical divide the world of the past (as in the proper sense not yet known) from the present and known world; but the process is illusory, because this known world, which is the furniture of his mind, and the cosmos which forms the criterion for that which has not yet been systematized, is in itself largely built up of the communicated experience of others. Is it not then a flat contradiction to bring as a canon to criticism that which presupposes uncriticized testimony, and has absorbed it into the tissues of its organism?’

            The objection demands consideration, but its force depends on our supposing that the present experience, which is to be taken as the historical canon, is mere common experience, and it is answered by the reflection that the testimony which the present object involves is, or at least ought to be, no uncriticized material. The experience in short which is to be the foundation of historical criticism must itself be a critical experience.

            The object of critical experience can neither be said to be given, nor, so far as the individual critic is concerned, to grow. It is made (or it makes itself); it is a creation, though not from nothing; it is the new-birth of an organism from matter organic but no longer vital.

            The contents which in early life are taken into and build up our consciousness, consisting as they do of our individual experiences blended into one substance inextricably with the experiences of others, exist in the uncritical mind as that which (for itself at least) is a confused and unsystematized world of consciousness. It is to such a world that the critical intelligence awakens, and its awakening is the sundering of its material from itself. It stands (so far as awakened) a self-conscious unity on this side, and regarding its matter as from the outside demands from it the same oneness, that intelligible unity which, as the world of an intelligence, is to have and virtually has. The new object, which now for the critical mind is the sole and increasing reality, is the reorganization of the old world; it is true only because recreated, and can be recreated only because connected into a rational system. Every part here must live, and live in the life of the whole. The dead matter which was received on authority, and held true because it was so received, must render an account of its claims. It is true, if at all, now no longer as mere testimony, but because it has been examined and satisfactorily mediated with the critical object as at present existing.

            This is the condition of its re-vitalization, that it can be subsumed under the present critical world. But what then is this world, which thus in its hands has sentence of life and death? It is the world of critical observation. The ultimate real object, the final reference and last basis, is constituted by that which has been, or can be, personally verified in our own external or internal critical observation. If we are asked for the reason of our beliefs we are sooner or later in the last resort brought back to this; and it is thus our immediate personal (though that need not mean our individual) experience, on which, by many steps or by few, all our certainty depends.

            Our answer then to the above objection is this. Certainly our present world contains matter of testimony, but not as matter of testimony. What we stand upon is personal observation; and what we have ground to connect with that we will receive because of its connexion with that, and subject to appeal to that; and we will receive nothing else, but from that basis we will order our world.

 

            But yet it is a matter of fact that our world is extended to fresh cases which (roughly speaking) have nothing analogous to previous phenomena. And, this being so, we are far at present from having established our contention that history is incapable of attesting to events without analogy in the present world. For why should not historical testimony furnish such non-analogous cases? Our answer must depend on the meaning we give to ‘historical testimony’. If historical testimony implies more than probability, if it is equivalent to scientific evidence, then the above question remains unanswerable. There is no reason why such attestation should not be possible. But if we see cause (or choose) to oppose scientific to historical testimony, and to confine the latter to the sphere of the probable, then the question answers itself, so soon as we have discovered what are the conditions of the above extension to the non-analogous. What are these conditions?

            That my real world can be widened by the taking in of new facts, and that part from any special analogy, is indisputable. And in the first place (1) it may be so enlarged by my own observation. Let us take as an example the so-called ‘mesmeric’ phenomena. These may be said (with accuracy sufficient for the present purpose) to have possibly no analogy to anything in the observer’s world hitherto; yet no one could maintain that it was impossible to know and to be certain of these phenomena as real facts. On the other hand no one would assert that these facts could be assured to us by the same amount of observation, as would be enough for phenomena of a class already recognized (wholly or partially) and capable of subsumption under an acknowledged head as a similar or subordinate case. In a word, if we are left to our own observation, and have nothing analogous to support us, we can indeed learn new facts with certainty, but on one condition only, namely that of the most careful examination often repeated.

            So far direct observation. Let us pass now to testimony (2) and ask in the second place—Can I learn un-analogous facts mediately with equal certainty, and if so, on what condition?

            Let us take once more the ‘mesmeric’ phenomena. These may have no analogy in our own private experience; and yet we may receive the facts, on testimony, as no less certain than those which we find for ourselves. They are received, and that critically, as attested: but, on the other hand (although not contrary to the conditions which make experience possible, nor yet in contradiction with the object he knows at present), they yet may be without any apparent analogy in the world of the individual critic.

            Testimony rests on experience, and testimony goes beyond experience, and, as it would seem, without the support of experience. How is this possible? The answer is that in this, the strongest imaginable case, the testimony must be the strongest imaginable; it must be equal in validity to our own most careful observation. Nothing short of this is enough. The question then arises, ‘How is such validity possible, if, as we have seen, testimony must finally rest on an inference from personal knowledge, and if personal knowledge is ultimately based on our own intelligent observation?’

            The explanation is this—that by inferences, however complicated yet in the end resting on personal observation, we have so apprehended and possessed ourselves on the consciousness of others, that we are justified in assuming the identify of their standpoint with our own; i.e. we can be assured that the already systematized world, which was brought as a canon by the witnesses to the observation and to the subsumption of the mesmeric phenomena, was practically the same as that which we should have brought. We thus are certain that the men can see for us, because we know that they are able to think for us. And, having this entire confidence, we run no risk beyond that which our own experience is at all times liable to, viz. the error arising from individual perturbation.

            Or, in other words, by an inference from that which I know already I certainly discover the witness’s mind is a universe, a cosmos, like my own and subject to the same laws; and hence, if I can conclude in addition to his integrity and his will to observe and judge, his judgement is to me precisely the same as my own. He may be right or wrong, but so may I; he is as likely to be right as I am; and I can only tell whether he is right by the same criteria which (apart from fresh observation) tell me that I am right. If I am able to apply a negative and positive criticism to his new fact, as I do to my new fact, then his fact is as good as mine. Our objective world is known to be the same, his subjective power of extending the object is known to be equal to mine, and the distinction of our individualities makes no difference to the matter itself.

            We have seen that testimony, even without analogy, can be made part of our present critical object; but we have seen also on what condition. Testimony goes beyond individual experience, but not beyond our experience; or it takes us beyond our experience if it takes us with it. It is not uncriticized; it stands, if at all, on the basis of our world. It has been made subject to the laws and has been connected with and become part of our personal experience, not in its own right as testimony, not in the right of the witness as witness, but in the right of and on the guarantee of our own intelligence.

            The question proposed above, ‘Under what conditions is it possible to extend our experience to fresh phenomena, which (roughly speaking) are without analogy in what has been hitherto observed?’, has been answered. Such enlargement, apart from our own observation, is possible only through the above-described identification of consciousness. This is the one and the indispensable condition.

            The bearing of this result will be seen more clearly when exhibited in its negative form as an answer to the question, ‘Under what conditions does testimony necessarily fail to establish a non-analogous case?’ In the first place, we must say, wherever we are unable to verify the witness generally; in the second, wherever we cannot satisfy ourselves with respect to his particular procedure.

(1) In the first place, wherever the standpoint of the witness differs (wholly or in relation to the particular class of facts in question) from our own, or wherever its agreement is not known to us, there the testimony cannot stand without analogy from our own experience. For, however, possible any matter may be, yet we cannot on testimony receive it as real, unless we have ground to connect it with the real. Analogy is such a ground, but, failing analogy, there is nothing left but the inference to a strength of testimony which can exist only on the assumption of the identification of our own with another’s consciousness (in general, or in relation to one particular division of the world); and this assumption, in the case supposed at present, we have no right to make.

To repeat—wherever the so-called ‘fact’ is made by subsumption under a view of the world different from ours, wherever we fail to make out that the judgement rested (consciously or unconsciously) on an ordered system identical with our own, there the ‘fact’ cannot be affirmed except on analogy; for, since the narrative is based on beliefs different from ours, the facts are affected by the beliefs, or, for anything we know, they may be so; we have no security that they are not affected. And the application of the above is, that any narrative of ‘facts’ which involves judgements proceeding from a religious consciousness or a view of the world which, as a whole or in respect of the part in question, differs from ours, cannot have such force as to assure us of any event un-analogous to present experience.

(2) In the second place, even where we are able to be sure that the witness regarded his facts from a point of view identical with our own, yet, taking this for granted, wherever we are not able to assume the witness’s integrity, and wherever we have not firm grounds for believing that the amount of careful and intelligent observation was brought to the case which we ourselves should have considered necessary—there the identification of consciousness is still incomplete; the testimony is not equal to our own verification, and the matter of it must stand, if at all, on analogy, and apart from analogy cannot be received.

 

We have asked the question, ‘Can our knowledge be extended by ourselves to embrace a fresh world of phenomena?’ And we have answered that question in the affirmative. We have stated the means, our stringent observation. We have inquired again, ‘Can testimony similarly enlarge our experience, where analogy fails?’ And we have answered, ‘Yes, where identification of consciousness is possible; but, where it is not possible, Never.’ ‘Never’ for this reason, that to be critical we must stand on our own experience, that an extended experience is ours when we make it, and that the matter of testimony, where it does not become ours in such a manner as to be valid of itself and directly, must be valid and ours indirectly by an inference from the basis of our knowledge. Such conclusion is an analogy, and by a mere analogical argument you cannot conclude to a non-analogous fact.

 

To this latter statement we shall have to return; but at present we have ended all that we have to say on testimony in general. We must pass to historical evidence in particular. We asserted above provisionally that in no case could historical testimony establish the non-analogous; that, for example, it could not attest the existence of ‘mesmeric’ phenomena. There seems at first sight no ground in the foregoing for such a contention. We must attempt, however, to justify it.

But such justification will be possible only at the cost of a considerable amount of assumption. What historical testimony can prove, and cannot prove, must depend in the end upon what we mean by ‘historical testimony’. The answer to this question we must take to no small degree for granted.

What is historical evidence? It seems, till we try it, so easy to say; but the effort assures us of the presence of difficulty.

When we speak of historical evidence, and when we emphasize the ‘historical’, the accent is due to the contrast which, either disguisedly or openly, exists in our mind between ‘scientific’ and ‘merely historical’. In general we imagine a distinction between the two sorts of testimony, but to put that difference into words is in any case arduous; and to do so without the assumption of some point which is a matter of controversy is, in the present state of opinion, I believe, impossible.

It is easy to bring forward a partial answer. We may say, if we will, that history is a testimony of the past to the past, while science is that of the present to the present, of the present in the sense of what is unchangeably: and this answer, if it is not the truth, must be said at any rate to have its truth. But for present purposes in its simple form it is altogether insufficient.

For in a certain sense we know nothing but the past. Scientific testimony, scientific observations are, like all things human, events in time, and while we grasp them as present they are gone. This is no psychological refinement: there is no one too sensible or too careless to apprehend at least that the present of to-day is the past of to-morrow, this week of next week, the last century of this century.

In a certain sense again we know nothing but the present. That the object of knowledge must be present is a truism; and historical evidence, to be valid for us, must be here and now before us.

And in practice the differences of time are no more account that the differences in space. That a scientific experiment was made this year or last year may be in itself as utterly indifferent as the fact that it was made in England or America; the intervals are nothing to us. Historical testimony again may be what is called contemporary with ourselves; but in itself such a consideration does not necessarily lead us to belief or to disbelief. The orthodox Catholic of our day gets no hearing for his stories except from Catholics; and the tales of the uneducated concerning witchcraft or spectres do not find more favour from the fact that they belong to the present generation.

The distinction of past and present, as we see, will not help us from our puzzle; and our confusion is by no means lessened when we reflect that we cannot name one single event which, in certain quarters, would not be considered an object for science—‘science’ to be construed in the narrow meaning of physical science, and the event to be taken in the unlimited extent of its entire signification. On the other hand, the reflection meets us that, in the opinion of many, there is not one single ‘scientific’ fact which, as an event, can be excluded from history, if we allow ourselves the fullest use of the word.

In view of such complications, when we find that the objects attested to by history and science are apparently indistinguishable, and that the date of the attesters matters nothing in itself, we are at a loss to perceive any longer that distinction in kind we imagined to exist.

If further we confine this distinction to degree, and say history with its evidence is probable, while certainty belongs to the essence of science, we perhaps shall have stated what is altogether true, and in words at least shall have established our contention. For if history as a whole be probable, and if every probable detail be admitted to rest on an argument from analogy, then that the matter of historical testimony stands, if at all, on an analogical argument is an obvious conclusion. But it is in words alone that the assertion is made good, while the difference to be made manifest is simply obscured. We shall be found merely to have asserted that everything which is certain is matter of science, and that everything not provable is matter of history.

To identify the matter of science and history is not only in itself a serious assumption where the meaning of science is natural science; but it also four our purpose is practically useless. It is useless, because the terms ‘scientific’ and ‘historical’ will not help us in the least towards a result, but in this sense will merely express the result itself. They will be empty synonyms for ‘certain’ or ‘probable’.

It is not worth to linger over efforts at definition like the above. The attempts are hopeless. To maintain the distinction at all the sphere of history must be limited; and history can be limited only in the face of counter-propositions. To define historical testimony we must divide the whole which some think indivisible, and to do this by proof involves an engagement along the whole front of the position.

For our purpose here there is nothing practicable except to assume what we think is necessary, and to remember that it remains an assumption throughout.

We take historical testimony in the first place (1) to be in history, i.e. we confine it within the field of human tradition. Geological, geographical evidence, evidence from excavations, and evidence from language, we refuse to consider as properly historical. The reason is this, that they do not essentially lie within the period of human records; and history-writing is to count for us here as the limit of critical history.

Historical testimony in the second place (2) is to history. Astronomical and meteorological records, the whole account kept of natural events, are, as we understand it, not part of history. History for us too is a record of events, but the record of a single field, the tradition and the tale of the deeds and sufferings of men.

The theory which science may construct of the development of our system or of the planet on which we live; the story of the origin of animal life and the growth of its varies species, the account of the generation of humanity itself with its early stages and slow gradations—these we may accept (as we all do and must accept them) in some sense or other; but they one and all for our present inquiry must fall beyond the historical limit. Such evidence is not historical evidence.

We must go still farther. The records of the science of the day of its present human phenomena; the observations and experiments recorded by the physiologist or doctor, and even the narrations of empirical psychology—these in addition we refuse (so far as scientific) to consider under the head of historical testimony. Historical material they may be. (Is there anything human which may not be?) There is no human record which is not historical material, and therefore in a sense historical testimony also. It is not, however, the facts as attested which in such a case fall within the field of history. It is not the facts which are historical, but only the fact of their attestation, which latter belongs to a different world. To express the same thing more simply, scientific evidence is a human phenomenon which in itself is not scientific.

What is the ground of our refusal above? The following:—not only must historical testimony be in history and to history, but it also (3) must have its origin in an historical interest.

The interest of science is the discovery of the laws of what is, neither past nor present nor future events, nor events at all, but only the abiding. The interest of history is in the recalling of a course of events which are not, which neither exist nor will exist, but which have existed. The object of the one is ‘the permanent amid change’, the object of the other ‘the changes of the permanent’; facts to the one are illustrations, to the other are embodiments; the individuals of the one are limited to be abstracted, of the other are incorporated to be realized.

In more simple language, the interest at the basis of scientific testimony is to use the particular case just so far as to get the universal out of it; the concretion of life is worth having solely for the sake of the abstract relations it contains. But the interest which gives birth to historical testimony is a human interest, an interest in the particular realization. Our common nature, which is personal in us all, feels in each one of us ‘that nothing human is alien to ourselves’. Our interest in the past is our feeling of oneness with it, is our interest in our own progression; and because this human nature to exist must be individual, the object of historical record is the world of human individuality, and the course of its development in time. For scientific testimony the man is a mere example, for historical never: he is a new incarnation of the same felt substance, the manifest individualization, it may be, at highest, of a stage in progress (but on this point we wish to express no opinion). For the universal as such the historical witness cares not at all; at most it concerns him to see it embodied in a single person or the spirit of a nation.

It is possible, we admit, where matters are so complex and the tendencies of the mind so mix and meet, that the testimony of science may wander for the time to a merely historical field and interest; it is possible again that a record made for purposes of science may cover in addition the ground of history. In the first case the testimony is merely historical and not scientific; in the second case the testimony is both. It is primarily scientific and incidentally historical; it is more than historical, and in considering historical testimony we must be allowed to exclude it from our conclusion.

But in the vast majority of cases the three conditions we have just explained will be found sufficient to distinguish the testimony of history and of science. Doubtful cases will remain and must remain. The story of the plague at Athens might well have been told either from the point of view of history or from that of science; as it stands perhaps it belongs to both. The field of ‘mesmeric’ and similar phenomena, in the sphere between physiology and psychology, would afford a variety of evidence, passing by slow degrees from the scientific to the historical, and thence to a region which holds of neither science nor history. But these cases do not trouble our general distinction. Our rule must be this: we must first discover, as we can, whether the testimony is to be called historical or not; in the second place we must ask whether, being historical it is at the same time more, whether it is also scientific. This second class which is also scientific (i.e. such evidence as would be allowed to constitute the proof or part of the proof of a scientific generalization) we do not call simple historical testimony, and wherever it exists the following conclusions have no application.

We have narrowed ‘historical testimony’ to a limited field; and we have been forced to renounce the smallest attempt to justify our procedure. Arbitrary as that may appear it is not so altogether; and the result will I think accord with the beliefs of the majority.

 

Having attempted in some measure to define our terms we can take up the question once more, ‘Is historical testimony capable of extension to the non-analogous?’

We can now put that question in its other form, ‘Is historical evidence probability or proof?’ Into this general distinction it is impossible here to enter. It must be taken for granted, and wherever it is not allowed, wherever fact and probability are identified, there we admit the conclusions of this essay are without validity.

Is the matter of history probably or certain? We believe it to be probable; but this does not mean that about all its contents there is practically a doubt. It means that, be there never so many converging lines of probable reasoning, yet these never transcend the region of practical certainty. The result is never theoretically proved.

And historical ‘proof’ may be conclusive, in so far that we cannot doubt; a legal ‘proof’ may in many cases leave room for no possible hesitation; but neither the one nor the other is for us a scientific demonstration.

The matter of historical testimony is, we believe, not a certainty but a probability; the grounds of this assertion will be given below. But let us in the first place (1) suppose that it is admitted to be probable; then the conclusion will follow that it cannot extend to events without analogy in the sphere of present certainty.

Why is this? It is because in history we have a probable conclusion, which at the same time is required to stand as certain; an hypothesis which cannot be scientifically verified, but which nevertheless is to be taken as a fact; and the only means, the sole justification of such a result is in the accordance of the conclusion of the hypothesis with the known world. And that is the present world, the verifiable world, the world of to-day, or (in another application of the term) the world of science.

The propositions of science cannot be probable; the scientifically probable is not yet scientific doctrine. The theories of historical fact again are not probable in the sense that they are simply the statement of open questions. They are results; and where no result is possible, no history exists. But, resting on mere probable evidence, to come to a result beyond the limit of analogy—when we know in the present world no similar case, nor any tendency which makes in the direction—this is the procedure, we think, of no reasonable person.

And it should not be forgotten that, if the interest of history is not the enlargement of the territory of science, but rather the exhibition of the oneness of humanity in all its stage and under all its varieties; if it is ourselves that we seek in the perished (and is there anything else which we seek?) if the object of our endeavour is to breathe the life of the present into the death of the past, and re-collect into this pantheon of the mind the temporal existences which once seemed mortal;—then, where we encounter an alien element which we cannot recognize as akin to ourselves, that interest fails, the hope and the purpose which inspired us dies, and the endeavour is thwarted. The remembrance of our childhood and our youth is the sweetest of pleasures, for it gives us the feeling of ourselves, as the self of ourself and yet as another; and the failure to recognize or the impossibility of interest in our earlier life is, to those whom it has befallen, the bitterest pain of the most cruel estrangement.

But to resume:—If historical conclusions are probable, they are subject to analogy. Next we must ask if they ever are more than probable.

This question (2) we answer in the negative. If more than probably they must needs be scientific; they would be equal to the results of our critical observation, and for this, as we have seen, is required both identification of standpoint and assurance of sufficient integrity and carefulness.

To these the nature of historical testimony presents insurmountable obstacles.

In the first place (A) we must remember that historical testimony not only is to history, but also in history. This addition prevents the identification of our minds with the minds of the witnesses. For history (i) (we assume it) is progressive, is a progress not only in the sense of that which increases in quantity, but in the sense of that which develops or evolves itself, is essentially the same in stages of growth which are diverse in quality, which differ from each other even more than the blossom from the bud, and the fruit from the blossom.

If the bud were self-conscious it would know of itself, but not in the way that the blossom know its, still less as the fruit knows it; and as failing of the truth its knowledge must be said to be false.

Still more is it so with history. In that ceaseless process which differentiates itself only as a means to integration, and which integrates itself only with the result of a fuller differentiation, the consciousness of the earlier stage of humanity is never the consciousness of the later development. The knowledge it has of itself is partial and false when compared with the epoch of an intenser realization. And when we reflect that for this higher development it is that history exists, we see that it is a hope doomed only to disappointment, when the present expects in the mind of the past to find the views and beliefs of the present.

If the stages of evolution were essentially diverse, the possibility of history is inconceivable; and if history were a manifestation of human phenomena where all but the accidental was simply the same, the interest it excites would in no respect be higher than the pleasure we take in an ordinary novel.

To proceed:—Not only is man’s nature progressive, but (ii) history is concerned, so to speak, with the most human part of humanity, and hence the most fully progressive. The conscious deeds and sufferings, the instinctive productions, and the unconscious destinies of men and of nations live most with the special and characteristic life of an individual epoch; and it is time and the children of the particular time which alone are the past for which history cares.

And not only is the matter of history in progress, not only again does history select that element which progress affects the most, but thirdly (iii) with that sphere its interest leads to the most distinctive embodiment of the passing stage; not to those social relations which possess limited permanence, but to the striking, the temporal, in a word the individual.

For science it is true the observations of one age are valid for the conclusions of another; and that, it may be added, where no present analogy is perhaps in existence. The facts of ‘mesmerism’ could be proved, we doubt not, by simple scientific testimony; and astronomical observations are accepted as facts, and doubtless would be so no less, in case they were supported by no analogy. The reason of this is, of course, that we are able so to reconstruct the observers and the conditions of their observations, as to possess ourselves entirely of their faculties, and use them as our own. And the possibility of this consists in the fact that science abstracts. It takes account not of all phenomena, but in each of its divisions of a separate and limited province, and it uses, so to speak, not the whole but a part alone of the observer’s consciousness.

The object of science does not transform itself in a ceaseless progress, and the subject of science can separate itself from the concrete development of the historical mind, and can remain practically identical while coexisting with standpoints generally diverse. But this with history is impossible.

Not only do we fail to possess ourselves of the historical witness in such manner as to secure scientific proof, but second (B), even were this the case, to reconstruct the particular observation is well night impossible.

For the original fact of history is (i) an event which perishes as it arises. It dies and it can never be recalled. It cannot repeat itself, and we are powerless to repeat it. And in addition (ii) we cannot prepare for it.

We may be ignorant of its approach; and if we were aware of that, yet to post ourselves in the fitting locality may be out of our power; or, given our presence at the time and place, still the fact is too complex for a certain observation. To fix you must isolate; and how can you isolate here?

And, given your power to isolate and to fix, yet too often you know the important point. The moment which decides the movement of a complication reveals itself as such when the tendency is established; and then from our knowledge of the present too late we deplore our ignorance in the past.

And further there remains (iii) yet another consideration which weakens still further (as compared with juridical) well nigh the whole of historical testimony. With the possible exception of contemporary evidence the historian is unable to cross-examine his witnesses. He can, by a critical analysis of the deposition, as a whole in relation to its parts, and of the relations which the parts bear to one another, and further by a comparison with other statements, to a certain extent make good this defect. But his procedure remains in the end but a wretched substitute, and a permanent source of weakness.

Such are the obstacles in the way of a scientific historical proof. The result of their consideration is this—that, even in case the historian should succeed in exhibiting the identity of standpoint, yet the further reconstruction will never be complete enough to take him beyond a mere probability; and hence, since a probable conclusion must rest on analogy, that therefore the non-analogous is excluded for ever from the sphere of historical testimony.

This result we believe to be simply the theoretical expression of the best historical practice, and when there is one single supposed event in tradition, to which present experience can supply no analogy, which yet remains unchallenged by criticism, then and not till then will it be necessary to ask how such a condition of things can exist, and to attempt to reconcile with it the doctrine we have now put forward and endeavoured to defend.

This doctrine is at all events the reverse of sceptical. The present experience, which is open to our research, is so wide in its extent, is so infinitely rich in its manifold details, that to expect an event in the past to which nothing analogous now corresponds may fairly be considered a mere extravagance. And taking again historical testimony, as we have it now, there will be few, I think, who one reflection will find the above conclusions either forced the facts or strained beyond them; or whose point of view will render impossible their general adoption.

But it will be urged that existing historical witnesses are no fair sample of historical testimony, that what may be or is does not mean what ought to be, and that first the conclusion has been fixed, and then a term has been narrowed to suit it. This in any case has not been done; but it is perfectly true that, if historical testimony be used in a more extensive sense, the above conclusion fails to apply.

History perhaps is a science to generalize what is, to discover the laws of phenomena. If it is this, then historical evidence not only may be but must be scientific; and nothing but scientific testimony has a right to be called historical testimony, that what may be or is does not mean what ought to be, and that first the conclusion has been fixed, and then a term narrowed to suit it. This in any case has not been done; but it is perfectly true that, if historical testimony be used in a more extensive sense, the above conclusion fails to apply.

History perhaps is a science to generalize what is, to discover the laws of phenomena. If it is this, then historical evidence not only may be but must be scientific; and nothing but scientific testimony has a right to be called historical. But in a world where all that we find in existence is so hard to understand, it seems idle to reflect on what merely is to be; and to speculate on a mere discounted possibility (or perhaps impossibility) is never, I think, a legitimate proceeding.

Let us suppose, though, that history is really to be a science, and one thing is clear from the first, that the mass of existing historical testimony is non-scientific, and well night (if not altogether) devoid of the smallest value. The necessary scientific evidence must be made.

‘It is being made’ (we shall be told of course) ‘and that by statistics.’ But to see the relations which the elements of particular societies bear to one  another, or even to generalize laws, which apparently in all societies are likely to be more or less correct, is one thing. It is one thing to discover permanent relations in the stationary; and if history were stationary (if we could say of it that it was and is to eternity) in the case the science of history would be far simpler expectation. But it is another, an altogether and an utterly different, undertaking to find the eternal laws which ‘explain’ the changes of an unending evolution, which is for us only so far as it has made itself, and each stage of which is the qualitative new-birth of an organic, and more than organic unity, which resumes its lower developments in a fresh integration, and informs its elements with its own distinctive nature. If the ‘explanation’ of the development of a man’s individuality in every case presupposes the result it arrives at, and ‘explains’ in the end nothing that is individual—then it must be a more futile attempt for us who have not the result before us, mere children who have seen and known no more than the childhood of humanity, to ‘explain’ from that the future of its life, and to reach the laws which will evolve its character, through successive individualizations, from you to manhood and from manhood to age. In this way to seize the ‘red strand of necessity’ in progress is surely impossible, and ‘science of tendencies’ is an amiable phrase, which sounds not better than ‘science of intentions’.

And if this science of progress is to be possible in itself, yet, where everything turns on recording, as they arise, the essential facts, there presents itself at once a new impediment. The essential facts are the determining element of movement, and the means to fresh end; but to apprehend the means implies the knowledge of the end, to know the essential movement involves the knowledge of the terminus. But, confined as we are to a limited stage, with the heights above us hidden from our eyes (we we are, that we know) there remains to us nothing but either to secure the whole of events, and this is impossible; or to run in imminent danger of recording those facts which are not essential, and hence are useless for the science of progress. It is a commonplace that the past has recorded too much that we could well space, and too little of that we would most gladly know. Will not be so always? What we think the important phenomena of 1870 and 1871 may perhaps have eluded our accurate observation, and in 1971 may with other things be a matter of controversy, while as for the interest of the historian of 1971, and the facts which bear most in his mind on progress, of these perhaps we have simply no notion.

So much in passing—but if after all there can really exist historical testimony which is more than probable, it must fall outside of and destroy our conclusion; and of course can assure us of non-analogous facts, since it is of such strength as to be valid evidence for a law of science.

 

We have ended the first and by far the largest division of our subject. We have found the principle of critical history, and have now to see its application to existing testimony. But let us briefly resume our present result.

We have seen so far that history is matter of inference; that every inference rests on a presupposition; and that this presupposition is formed by present experience. We have further shown that, although this experience is not always personal in the sense of that which we can immediately verify for ourselves, it yet is personal in the sense that upon the observation and judgement of our own mind it ultimately depends. We have shown that it is present, not in the sense of connexion with this or that moment, but in the sense of belonging to no moment in particular. We have shown that this character belongs alone to scientific testimony, that material of history must hence be subject to analogy; and this distinction we have endeavoured to strengthen and defend.

Criticism is now left fronting the material, to recreate which it possesses and feels both the mission and the strength. And this may be considered an artificial position, in so far as the individual critic never does actually separate himself from the whole of his historical knowledge, but invariably brings with him to the work a portion of the traditional object, already rationalized and made part of his present and critical world. Nor is this apparent anticipation of his result unjustified in the individual, if that which he brings as a canon to criticism has been itself already confronted with criticism and rationalized by virtue of it—i.e. has been concluded to be actual fact from a critical standpoint which is essentially the same as the critic’s own. For the true world is continually growing, and when part of history has been made real it at once becomes a means for the realization of the remainder. Artificial then as the complete separation of criticism from its material appears and moreover is, when we regard the individual alone, yet it is far from being so as soon as we consider the process of criticism in itself.

History, in the character of historical criticism, views its contents as lying outside itself, and its task is once more to contain them within itself. But to this the very nature of the contents presents an obstacle. But to this the very nature of the contents presents an obstacle. The contents are records, which in a twofold manner claim to be received as real facts; first as the record of some particular age and author, and secondly in the character of recorded events. If now the whole were found to be completely mediated, subject to the conditions and according to the analogy of present experience; if namely the events narrated were consistent, were possible, and followed in a sequence, of which the causes and the results were in some measure known to us; and if further the dates and the general credibility of the writers were established by a satisfactory train of inference;—in that case criticism would have no task before it, save the work of verifying and reaffirming under its own guarantee the unchanging material in its original shape.

But how far, how entirely such a supposed state of things is removed from reality, needs not be remarked. It does not exist, and the mode in which the matter of history is produced does not admit of its possible existence. It would indeed be strange if every record were authentic and trustworthy, if judgements of a succession of witnesses scattered along the development of human progress were all secured from error, and without alternation could be harmonized into one connected whole. No one at the present time would dare to say that such is the case; and if such is not the case, then criticism, if it is to be criticism, must necessarily be to a certain extent negative.

            So much is generally seen, but there is something more which cannot be said to be seen and generally admitted, namely this—that a negative criterion, if it exist at all, must be from its nature an absolute criterion, or be a self-contradiction. To the consciousness which never has risen to the critical point of view ‘facts are stubborn things’, and the most stubborn of all are those which the mind feels it has no share in, and which come to it with the weight of external authority. We have seen, however, what these facts are made of, and, at the point we have reached, it needs no lengthy reflection to justify the negative character of criticism.

            Criticism from its very essence cannot be simply affirmative. The object which is to be criticized has ceased to be the real object, since for criticism it is the critical and that alone which is real, and the uncritical object is consequently negated in its old and not yet reaffirmed in its new character. Criticism, if it be criticism, must in the beginning and provisionally suspect the reality of everything before it; and if there are some matters which it cannot reaffirm without falsifying itself, these matters have themselves to thank. If indeed it is so that this is their lot, that they cannot withdraw from criticism because in their very substance is involved and admitted that principle which in criticism becomes conscious of itself, and if yet to submit to criticism be for them to be transmuted or to be destroyed—this is no charge to lay against the arbitrariness of the critic. It is the contradiction implicit in the facts which to their own destruction has become explicit, and if they are denied it is only because they deny themselves.

If for history the fact means that which is real, and if the real means that which criticism has affirmed, it should not be forgotten that it is mere nonsense to talk of anything as ‘an historical fact’ unless criticism has been able to guarantee it as such.

There may be professed historical events, which in themselves, since they are represented without historical antecedent or sequent, contradict the conception of an historical fact (are the opposite of that which an event must be in order for history) and, as they stand, history cannot even discuss their possibility.

There may be events which, though in themselves coming under the conditions of history, can yet be supported by no analogy from present experience, and, despite their testimony, they must wait for farther experience. There may be events which, though both possible and analogous, are mediated with the real by no sufficient connexion, and until connected they are not yet rationalized. And lastly there are narrated facts which criticism can reaffirm as certain or probable. We must ask ourselves in what this process consists.

The historical material, as has been before stated, is twofold and presents to criticism two sides, on the one side the author, on the other events recorded. Criticism must attempt on the one side to identify its consciousness, so far as possible, with that of the writer, by inference to establish his power and his will to narrate faithfully; on the other to find in the events recorded laws analogous to those which have been observed in present experience and in history so far as already rationalized. If the task be fully accomplished the facts are historically certain, if partially they are considered probable; but in each case they retain their original shape.

But these events thus reasserted by criticism for no continuous whole, the series presents gaps which a positive process is necessary to fill, and the process is an inferential re-creation according to law from a basis of present experience or of the historical certainty already attained. It is a sufficient answer to any difficulties which may be raised as to the construction of a past order to point to the procedure of our police courts, where, in addition to the reconstruction of the witness by cross-examination, the sequence of events is reached by an active combination from present data. The inadequacy, however, of the historical material both in respect of quantity and quality makes the completion in this manner of the series of events an impossibility, and the persistent attempts to join the open links by the creation of causes and motives can lead to nothing but overstrained Pragmatism, which fills the past with those fancies and opinions which only belong to the individual consciousness of the writer.

Thus far criticism has given an account of that portion only of its material which has been able to be realized because found to be already rational. There is still a remained which has not been rationalized, which in other language, because incapable of forming in its own shape a part of the true object, must be considered as simply subjective.

Error is here presupposed, and the task of criticism is, by the removal of error, where possible to restore the truth. The process, as before, admits of a twofold method, namely the reconstruction of the supposed historical fact either from its inward or outward side, by inferences on the one side from the mental character of the witness or on the other side from the course of events; and where the operation is successful, the fact once more takes its place in the world of reality, still as an outward event, but new-begotten and transformed.

It may be no unwarrantable digression to call attention once more to the view which in different forms we have so often encountered, according to which here the removal of mistake by criticism has for its result the ‘original fact’. But in the present case the ‘original fact’ is primarily for history a fallacious inference, and if by the ‘original fact’ be meant again that which the fact should have been, still this for history is an inference, the theory of a theory, whose result is a double-distilled theory.

There is still an unrationalized material remaining for history as a problem, alleged outward events which can be taken into the real series neither as unchanged nor yet as transmuted into other outward events. But even in this case criticism is not powerless; for, although the mistaken outward fact cannot be resolved into the real outward fact, we may none the less deal with the mistake itself, and the exhibition of those conditions which cased the wrong assertion of an outward fact is for criticism the satisfactory mediation of the alleged fact as a link in the historical sequence: the outward has now an existence, real indeed but inward, and assured to us only so far as inward.

Therese are the processes of criticism by which it makes its own alienated material of tradition, whether in the form of outward occurrences or in that of inward events; but there must ever remain elements which it cannot reappropriate, and in many cases the testimony must be taken simply as testimony, the existence of which is historical, but the real fact or, in other words, the explanation of which cannot be given because we do not possess the data for its reconstruction.

The fact as attested may be possible, and in this case we lack the inference necessary to make it, as attested, part of history; or the attested fact may be historically impossible, and in this case we know that, as attested, it can never be part of history.

In neither of these cases can the testimony be explained as arising from the real existence of the attested. But it will be objected that we are bound to account for the testimony otherwise, or else accept the supposed fact. ‘Testimony is a phenomenon,’ says Paley, ‘and the truth of the fact solves the phenomenon.’ ‘Testimony is a phenomenon’; that is indisputable, and as testimony it has its place in history. ‘The truth of the fact solves the phenomenon’; that is equally certain, and we could wish that we had any means of knowing the solution. ‘But’, we shall be answered, ‘it is the assumption of the existence of the attested fact which is this solution.’ That, however, depends entirely upon the nature of the fact alleged. The phenomenon to be solved is an historical phenomenon, and its solution must be an historical solution, and to propose as this solution a fact which, when taken as historical, contradicts the very notion of history, and dissolves together with history both itself and every other event, this is a proposition which may indeed do credit to its author’s zeal, but hardly to his prudence.

But if we are unable to accept the averred fact because it is either as yet without guarantee, or because it is an historical impossibility, are we then bound to account otherwise for the phenomenon of the testimony? Can it be urged against us that our theory contains within itself facts which contradict it, and that we must solve the facts or abandon the theory? By no means, for this is to confound that which is negatively with that which is positively irrational. These unrationalized recorded events are in contradiction with criticism only when affirmed by criticism, but now, in the character of objects which history does not yet know, they are nothing positive; they fall as yet without the theory; they are no foreign body taken up within the system, but are as yet an external and unassimilated crudity. The reproach, if such it be, that for history without the known there lies a still unknown, without the real a still unrealized, is a reproach not hard for history to bear, since she bears it in common with the whole of human knowledge.

No! It is no disgrace to be ignorant where the problem is recognized and the effort is made. And it may be that those who in some particular field have made that effort, and made it not in vain, may yet by trail and failure have learnt to regard perhaps one phenomenon, or it may be more, as incapable of resolution. This for the individual may be inevitable, but absolutely to assert the insolubility of any one historical element is to give offence to the consciousness of criticism and to strengthen the cause of her enemies. Historically to account for a phenomenon may not always be possible; but it behoves us always to attempt to exhibit its historical origin as the result of known historical conditions; and in this sense its possible ‘explanation’ must be considered in every case as beyond a doubt. Every phenomenon has a possible solution, because as historical it must be the result of an historical antecedent; and the cause is a possible object of knowledge, because the result is known already as that which by its very nature is a member in a series of links, the essence of which is to be knowable. Historical events there may be which are destined to remain for us always problems, but problems they remain for us and ever will remain, and their absolute insolubility, if we rightly consider it, involves no less than a contradiction in terms.

We have reached the end set before us, and the title ‘Presuppositions of Critical History’ is, I hope, in some measure explained and justified. To have set in the presuppositions of history generally (or of history viewed as a whole) a larger before me was once my wish. It was a desire too serious for accomplishment by me, but the truth of what has been done at present is perhaps, so far as it goes, independent of a wider result. For however humble the sphere of her rule, yet at least, while within that sphere, criticism is subject to no intrusion and oppressed by no authority. She moves on her path unheedful of the warning, unheedful of the clamour, of that which beyond her realm may be and may call itself religion and philosophy; her and philosophy and her religion are the realization and the fruition of herself, and her faith is this, that while true to herself she can never find an enemy in the truth.