The abstractionist and anti-historical character of the Aristotelian Logic had an injurious effect in the schools, though, on the other hand, it allied itself well with the persistent transcendentalism. Certainly, just as in the Middle Ages appeared reflections upon history, so there could be no avoiding the distinction between what was known logice and what was known historice, or, as Leibnitz afterwards formulated the distinction, between propositions de raison and propositions de fait. But these latter were always regarded with a compassionate eye, as a sort of uncertain and inferior truth. The ideal of exact science would have been to absorb truths of fact in truths of reason, and to resolve them all into a philosophy, or rather into a universal mathematics. Nor did the empiricists succeed in increasing their credit. These certainly paid particular attention to facts (hence the polemic of the Anti-Aristotelians and the origin of the new instrument of observation and induction). But by weakening the consciousness of the concrete universal they also weakened that of the concrete individual, and therefore presented the latter in the mutilated form of species and genera, of types and classes. Bacon, had he done nothing else, at any rate assigned a place to history in his classification of knowledge, which was divided, as we know, according to the three faculties (memory, imagination and reason), into History, Poetry and Philosophy. He passed in review the two great classes of history, natural and civil (the first of which was either narrative or inductive, the second more variously subdivided); thus he even pointed out the kinds of history that were desirable, but of which no conspicuous examples were yet extant, such as literary history.[6] Hobbes, on the other hand, having distinguished the two species of cognition, one of reason and the other of fact, "altera facti, et est cognitio propria testium, cujus conscriptio est historia," and having subdivided this into natural and civil, "neutra" (he added, that is to say neither the natural nor the civil) "pertinet ad institutum nostrum" which was concerned only with the cognitio consequentiarum, that is to say, science and philosophy.[7] Locke is not less anti-historical than Descartes and Spinoza, and even Leibnitz, who was very learned, did not recognize the autonomy of historical work, and continued to consider it as directed towards utilitarian and moral ends.
Treatises on historical art in the Renaissance.
Reflections upon history, suggested rather by the professional needs of historians than by a need for systematization and a profound philosophy, continued on their way, almost apart from the philosophy of the time. From the Renaissance onwards, treatises on historical art were multiplied at the hands of Robortelli, Atanagi, Riccoboni, Foglietta, Beni, Mascardi, and of many others, even of non-Italians; but their discussions usually centred upon elocution, upon the use of ornament and of digressions, upon arguments worthy of history, and the like. Among these writers of treatises we must note (here as well as in the history of Poetics and of Rhetoric) Francesco Patrizio or Patrizzi (1560), for his ideas, sometimes acute, sometimes incoherent and extravagant. Overcoming one of the prejudices of empiricism, he justly wished that the concept of history should not be limited to military enterprises and political negotiations alone, and that it should be extended to all the doings of men. With a like superiority to empirical views, he found historical representation not only in words, but also in painting and sculpture—(our times, so fruitful of histories graphically illustrated, should admit that he was to some extent right), and he did not accept chronological limits. He also insisted upon the mode of testing historical truth and upon the degree of credibility of witnesses. But he became extravagant, when he admitted a history of the future, calling the prophets as witnesses, and incoherent, when he both denied and affirmed the moral end of history.[8]
Treatises upon method.
Another form of empiricism, certainly more important, the methodological, which dealt with the canons and criteria to be borne in mind in making historical researches, accompanied the often rhetorical empiricism of writers of treatises. The reference to the duties of the historian in one place in Cicero was repeated and commented upon by all. But this treatment became gradually more wide, as we see especially in the work of Vossius, Ars historica sive de historia et historiae natura, historiaeque scribendae praeceptis commentatio (1623). The term "Historic" dates from this book and is formed on the analogy of Logic, Poetic, Rhetoric, etc., and applied to the theory or Logic of history. Gervinus (1837) and Droysen (1858) tried to bring this term again into vogue. The methodological treatment of historical research was more widely developed in the scholastic manuals of Logic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the Logica seu ars ratiocinandi of Leclerc (1692).[9] With these canons arising in the field of research and historical criticism, we may opportunely compare those concerning the mode of valuing and weighing evidence, which were gradually unified in juridical literature. Methodological treatment has also progressed in our times, in manuals such as those of Droysen, of Bernheim, of Langlois-Seignobos; but the general tendency of these works (as is also evident from their apparatus in heuristic, in criticism, in comprehension and in exposition) remains and must remain altogether empirical.
The theory of history and G. B. Vico.
The first philosopher who gave to History an importance equal to Philosophy was Vico, with his already-mentioned union of philosophy and philology, of truth and certainty, and with the example that he offered of a philosophic system, which is also a history of the human race: an "eternal ideal history, upon which the histories of nations run in time." For this reason (not less than from his strong consciousness of the difference in character between the metaphysical concept and mathematical abstraction) Vico was an Anti-Cartesian. He stands between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the opposer of the past and of the future, or of the nearest past and the nearest future. Indeed, there is even in Vico a trace of that vice which arises from a too indiscriminate identification of philosophy and history, which certainly constitute an identity, but an identity which is a synthesis and therefore a distinction. Hence, when no account is taken of this, the substantial truth affirmed loses its balance in philosophism and mythologism. The real epochs of Vico are too philosophic and have in them something forced; the ideal epochs are too historical and have in them something of exuberance and of contingency. The real epochs are not exempt from philosophistic caprices; the ideal sometimes become converted into a mythology (though full of profound meanings). For this reason, it has been possible now to praise, now to blame him for having invented the Philosophy of history. There is indeed in him, here and there, some hint of a philosophy of history sensu deteriori, but above all he is the great philosopher and the great historian.
The anti-historicism of the eighteenth century and Kant.
As the eighteenth century did not really know the concept of philosophy, so was it ignorant of that of history: its anti-historicism has become proverbial. There appeared at this time some celebrated theoretic manifestations of historical scepticism, of the negation of history, which seemed, as before to Sextus Empiricus, a thing without art and without method (ἅτεχνον ... καὶ ἐκ τἥς ἀμεθόδον ὕλης τυγχράνουσαν). The book of Melchior Delfico, Pensieri sull' Istoria e sull' incertezza ed inutilità della medesima (1808), is one of the last manifestations of this sort. But all the thinkers of that time were of this opinion; even Kant, in whose wide culture were certainly two lacunæ—artistic and historical. And if in the course of elaborating his system he was led by logical necessity to meditate upon art, or rather upon beauty, he never paid serious attention to the problem of history.