Works of Arthur Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer

Author:Arthur Schopenhauer [Schopenhauer, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Delphi Main Series
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Published: 2017-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XXXVIII.23 On History.

In the passage of the first volume referred to below I have fully shown that more is achieved for our knowledge of mankind by poetry than by history, and why this is so; inasmuch as more real instruction was to be expected from the former than from the latter. Aristotle has also confessed this, for he says: “και φιλοσοφωτερον και σπουδαιοτερον ποιησις ἱστοριας εστιν” (et res magis philosophica, et melior poësis est quam historia24), De poët., c. 9. Yet, in order to cause no misunderstanding as to the value of history, I wish here to express my thoughts about it.

In every class and species of things the facts are innumerable, the individuals infinite in number, the variety of their differences unapproachable. At the first glance at them the curious mind becomes giddy; however much it investigates, it sees itself condemned to ignorance. But then comes science: it separates the innumerable multitude, arranges it under generic conceptions, these again under conceptions of species, whereby it opens the path to a knowledge of the general and the particular, which also comprehends the innumerable individuals, for it holds good of all without one being obliged to consider each particular for itself. Thus it promises satisfaction to the investigating mind. Then all sciences place themselves together, and above the real world of individual things, as that which they have divided among them. Over them all, however, moves philosophy, as the most general, and therefore important, rational knowledge, which promises the conclusions for which the others have only prepared the way. History alone cannot properly enter into that series, since it cannot boast of the same advantage as the others, for it lacks the fundamental characteristic of science, the subordination of what is known, instead of which it can only present its co-ordination. Therefore there is no system of history, as there is of every other science. It is therefore certainly rational knowledge, but it is not a science. For it never knows the particular by means of the general, but must comprehend the particular directly, and so, as it were, creeps along the ground of experience; while the true sciences move above it, because they have obtained comprehensive conceptions by means of which they command the particular, and, at least within certain limits, anticipate the possibility of things within their sphere, so that they can be at ease even about what may yet have to come. The sciences, since they are systems of conceptions, speak always of species; history speaks of individuals. It would accordingly be a science of individuals, which is a contradiction. It also follows that the sciences all speak of that which always is as history, on the other hand, of that which is once, and then no more. Since, further, history has to do with the absolutely particular and individuals, which from its nature is inexhaustible, it knows everything only imperfectly and half. Besides, it must also let itself be taught by every new day in its trivial commonplaceness what as yet it did not know at all.

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