Historical determinism

“ In its complex totality, historical change is incapable of reduction except to one concept, that of development: a concept empty of everything that forms the peculiar content of history. The old philosophy of history regarded a conceptual working out of history as possible ”

“ Afterwards there is an internal imbalance, the spirit of conquest is lost, there is disintegration of the empire, reduction of the imperial body and afterwards, the development of the era of great demographic fractionation; if the nucleus of the empire is disintegrated, it is the second cycle. If it were the first, it would follow an evolution up to the phase of relative independence. ”

“ They have concluded that human evolution cannot be measured nor is it predictable, that the factors that govern the process can vary at a given moment and change the direction of the evolution of nations and that, whether or not an exceptional man appears, it can change the course of history at any time.”
“With such conceptions it is impossible to reach an historical synthesis: man is the only one responsible for his acts, it is he who decides the future and the sense of history. ”

“ Not so very long ago distinguished historians were insisting that the state, as the highest expression of man's social instincts and as the immediate concern of all human beings, is the only fit subject of historical study, and that history, therefore, must be simply "past politics" ”

“ We have called one type of history evolution, the other cumulation; but how have these higher types been reached? Has historical enumeration itself, which was supposed to stand at the beginning of all analysis, or has “history” itself in its strictest sense, as relating to the single as such, risen unaided into something more than “history”? By no means: history has grown beyond its bounds by the aid of something from without. It is unhistorical elements that have brought us from mere history to more than history. ”

“ The historical or comparative method has revolutionized not only the sciences of law, mythology, and language, of anthropology and sociology, but it has forced its way even into the domain of philosophy and natural science. For what is the theory of evolution itself, with all its far-reaching consequences, but the achievement of the historical method?—Prothero, Inaugural. ”

“ I offer it with all its shortcomings as an attempt to show the metric instincts of man everywhere and in all time, to trace the origins and evolution of the main national systems, to explain the apparently arbitrary changes which have affected them, to show how the ancient system used by the English-speaking peoples of the world has been able, not only to survive dangerous perturbations in the past, but also to resist the modern revolutionary system which has destroyed so many others less homogeneous, less capable of adaptation to circumstances. ”

“ Should such a final conclusive system of the interconnection of the various activities of the universe, physical, as well as intellectual and historical, ever be brought to completion at any point of time in the history of the human race, human knowledge would forthwith come to an end and future historical progress would be cut off from the very moment in which society was directed in accordance with the system, which would be an absurdity, mere nonsense. ”

“ For want of such real, minute vision of how changes come about in the past, we fall into ridiculously inconsistent estimates of actual movements, condemning in the present what we belaud in the past, and pronouncing impossible processes that have been repeated again and again in the historical preparation of the very system under which we live. ”

“ He sees in European society incarnate history, and any attempt to disengage it from its historical elements must, he believes, be simply destruction of social vitality. What has grown up historically can only die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. ”

“ And what he does is to make an equally valuable discovery: that the true theory of history is the theory of needs, which, granted his definition of needs, is as much as to say that history is history of reality and the theory of it is—the theory. ”

“ Vary the theme as you may in the countless histories of countless peoples; subdivide the course of its progress as you will, allowing for different local causes and different local phenomena, the true philosophy of history teaches that no real departure from this natural development is possible. But what if by the violent intervention of some new and entirely foreign force, another development and another life is given to the inanimate ashes of the old? ”

“ For some periods of human history, it could legitimately claim ample confirmation for its hypothesis, for example, the decline of feudalism, the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the English, American, French, and February Russian revolutions. As a heuristic principle the theory of historical materialism has proved fruitful even when obviously incomplete. ”

“ Under proper limitations the principles of both theories are conformable to historical knowledge, which shows us, on the one hand, that the state of the higher nations was reached by progression from a lower state, and, on the other hand, that culture gained by progression may be lost by degradation. If in this enquiry we should be obliged to end in the dark, at any rate we need not begin there. History, taken as our guide in explaining the different stages of civilization, offers a theory based on actual experience. ”

“ The mathematics of history precisely states that when Empires are in a depressive phase, they lose their colonies, the new countries begin their so called relative independence phase, characterized by political effervescence and instability and, once it ends, enter into a phase of progress, the first period of great strategic victories. ”

“ History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. ”

“ The transformation of political-social regimes is not done according to a constant ascending or descending line, but through alternative advances or reversals, some more intense than others, that produce a broken line as a result. ”

“ But the record of history also shows that men have repeatedly interfered and intervened in the historical process by discovery and invention. The historical record is subject to change. Man is not entirely free. Neither is he helplessly bound on the wheel of necessity, presently known as civilization. ”

“ And thus I hope even British respectability will not be overshocked if I use, in English as well as in so many other languages, the term, "historical materialism," to designate that view of the course of history, which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another. ”

“ You have often heard it said that Modern History is a subject to which neither beginning nor end can be assigned. No beginning, because the dense web of the fortunes of man is woven without a void; because, in society as in nature, the structure is continuous, and we can trace things back uninterruptedly, until we dimly descry the Declaration of Independence in the forests of Germany. ”

“ All societies or nations that have been built through time in order to avoid war, have resulted to be inoperative. But knowing said law, knowing before hand what will happen, it is absurd to think that men would voluntarily launch themselves into a precipice being able to modify the trajectory. Today we know where we are and where we are going. Is it in the hands of man to deviate the helm and change the course? The transcendental operation of turning the destiny of the world, advises us to study the process and system to be followed to execute this change of course”. ”

“ All of what are known as the historic rights of nations are totally done away; all questions regarding natural, political, strategic, and economic boundaries are henceforth to be classed as ancient history and resolutely disallowed. ”

“ Out of such partiality has inevitably grown the great man theory of human progression. The student of history passes along from point to point in the bloody trail of the historian, stopping at such characters as Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, etc., until these great destroyers are looked upon as the prime factors of the evolutionary state. Of course, these and such as these must not be ignored or left out, for history would cease to be history without them, but it is equally important to know that man, judged only by them, ceases to be man. ”

“ History is developed by the historical phases of each nation, its progress, its stability, difficulties and high points, it is not due to men in a particular or providential manner. Its historical process and socioeconomic development expresses the historical phase of the nation. ”

“ Holding consciously to the fact that history is dynamic, not static, i.e., that all historical material constitutes a unity that is revealed under the two laws of continuity and differentiation.
"There are no breaks or leaps in the life of a people. Development may hasten or may slacken, and may seem to cease for a time, but it is always continuous ”

“ This is an hypothesis which does not, of course, exclude the possibility of temporary and partial relapses, such as we know have taken place in the history of every civilized country, any more than it excludes the possibility of the decay and death of empires; but upon the whole it claims that progress and not retrogression is the law of human society. ”

“ In individual life, therefore, the primitive conception has been modified, but in the wider and more intricate life of a State the endless variety of incidents, characters, fortunes, the succession of centuries, and of modes of thought, literatures, arts, creeds, the revolutions in political ideals, offer so complex a mass of phenomena that the breakdown of the theory, patent at once in the narrower sphere of observation, is here obscured and shielded from detection. ”

“ And whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment and the first direction of circumstances, of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. ”

“ Every local historian might defy this law till history ended, but its necessity would be the same for man as for space or time or force, and without it the historian would always remain a child in science. ”

“ The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously with the self-destruction toward which—ever dissecting and dissecting the causes of phenomena—the old method of history is moving. ”

“ The presence of the problem of man’s free will, though unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.
All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of that question.
If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents. ”

“ Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation’s progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth, freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country. But not to mention the historians’ contradictions as to the nature of this program—or even admitting that some one general program of these conditions exists—the facts of history almost always contradict that theory. ”

“ To impregnate the historical elements, to cause them to run through a series of new historical transformations, a living, spontaneous fact was needed, without which they might have remained many centuries longer in the state of unproductive elements. ”

“ And if, in the course of centuries, the character of a nation has changed—an event which seldom takes place, and when it does is due always to radical causes—its history will immediately make known to us the cause of the change, and point out unmistakably its origin and source. ”

“ It will, however, be more satisfactory to probe the difficulty deeper, and inquire at once into the foundation of the common opinion that history must always remain in its present empirical state, and can never be raised to the rank of a science. We shall thus be led to one vast question, which indeed lies at the root of the whole subject, and is simply this: Are the actions of men, and therefore of societies, governed by fixed laws, or are they the result either of chance or of supernatural interference? ”

“ Ages before the time which the limitations of our knowledge force us to speak of as the dawn of history, man had reached a high stage of development. As a social being, he had developed all the elements of a primitive civilization. If, for convenience of classification, we speak of his state as savage, or barbaric, we use terms which, after all, are relative, and which do not shut off our primitive ancestors from a tolerably close association with our own ideals. ”

“ It is in the lessons drawn from this thorough comprehension of the past that the instruction of history lies, and among these lessons there is none truer than that institutions, like men, have their periods of strength and weakness, of growth and decay. ”