The Historical Method.
No subject would be more transformed in its teaching by the introduction of method work than history. But what is history? What are the materials with which the student works and what the method by which he arrives at historical truth? What is proof in historical study? The teacher of history must be able to give an answer to these questions, if he would do his work intelligently and effectively.
What is history? How does it differ in its aims and methods from natural science, from political and economic science, from sociology? According to the new logic, the differences are fundamental. History concerns itself with the unique evolution of man in his activities as a social being. It deals with human potentialities in their teleological connections. Out of past social facts it selects the unique facts that have a value for the period that is being studied and groups these facts in complex, evolving wholes. History does not seek for what is common to the social facts of the past; it does not attempt to generalize, to establish laws. It could not if it would, for it deals with facts that have occurred but once, that will not occur again, and a generalization assumes repetition. The natural sciences, on the other hand, including economics, political science and sociology, deal with substances and causal law. They select for their syntheses what is common to a group of facts; they generalize, they aim to establish laws, to formulate the conditions under which a thing will repeat itself. Their ideal is the organization of reality under the point of view of the general. There is, of course, but one reality and natural science and history are simply two logical methods evolved by the human mind for the purpose of organizing it that it may be comprehended. The ends of the two methods are different, and their methods of getting at the truth are different. The student trained in the one method is not necessarily acquainted with the other.