What a valuable step this was in the improvement of the method of
historical criticism it is needless to point out. By it, one may
say, the true thread was given to guide one's steps through the
bewildering labyrinth of facts. For history (to use terms with
which Aristotle has made us familiar) may be looked at from two
essentially different standpoints; either as a work of art whose
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] or final cause is external
to it and imposed on it from without; or as an organism containing
the law of its own development in itself, and working out its
perfection merely by the fact of being what it is. Now, if we
adopt the former, which we may style the theological view, we shall
be in continual danger of tripping into the pitfall of some A
PRIORI conclusion - that bourne from which, it has been truly said,
no traveller ever returns.
The latter is the only scientific theory and was apprehended in its
fulness by Aristotle, whose application of the inductive method to
history, and whose employment of the evolutionary theory of
humanity, show that he was conscious that the philosophy of history
is nothing separate from the facts of history but is contained in
them, and that the rational law of the complex phenomena of life,
like the ideal in the world of thought, is to be reached through
the facts, not superimposed on them - [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced].
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69