3. Romanticism and Historiogaphy.—Even re befo Louis XVI had issued royal edict directing an election of delegates to an the reaction against the frank and direct rationalism of Voltaire had definitely commenced in the works of the above-men tioned disciples of Rousseau. To the conserva tive element it seemed that the events of the French Revolution had finally demonstrated the futility of the rationalistic doctrines of catas trophic causation and the possibility of altering social institutions through the application of a few aself-evident dictates of pure reason.° Un fortunately, this laudable attempt to correct the artificiality of the dogmas of Voltaire led to a reaction in the opposite direction which was even less valid and' progressive than the theories of the rationalists. Romanticism in historiogra phy meant a decided retrogession in the direc tion of obscuranticism, and was an integral part of that reaction in social science which is chiefly identified with the names of Burke, De Bonald, De Maistre and Von Haller. The basic his torical premise of the historiography of roman ticism was the doctrine of the gradual and un conscious nature of cultural evolution. It pro claimed the unique organic unity and develop ment of all forms of national culture. There was a decided mystic strain in their thinking which maintained that the unconscious creative forces moved and operated in a mysterious manner which defied rationalistic analysis. It was held that all were subject to the operation of these mysterious forces of psychic power, which were later termed by Ranke, the °Zeitge ist." Great emphasis was laid upon tradition and the alleged °ideas) which went to make up this spirit of the age and of the nation. These conceptions naturally led to a dogma of polit ical fatalism which represented the individual or the nation as powerless before the mass of creative spiritual forces. Revolution was repre sented as particularly wicked, futile and worthy of special condemnation. There grew up that philosophy of political °quietism," which fitted in excellently with the current laissez-faire doc trines of the economists and political theorists. Out of this tendency there developed that noto rious and specious myth representing the Anglo Saxon peoples as the perfect examples of polit ical quietism, and, hence, of inherent political capacity, while an equally erroneous doctrine pictured the French as the typical example of a revolutionary and unstable nation utterly de void of all political capacity. This funda mental error did more than else to mar the accuracy of 19th century political his tory and philosophy and has not even yet been fully eradicated. Again, the idea of the pure, indigenous and spontaneous nature of national culture led to a narrowing of that cosmopolitan outlook of the rationalists and the centering of attention on purely national history. Further, for each nation the period of particular fertility for historical research was held to be the Mid dle Ages. This tendency was due in part to the strange misconception that this was the period of the fixing of the several national cultures and in part to the psychic affinity of the roman ticists with the medieval mental reaction to the problems of existence and causation. Language was believed to be the vital mark or criterion of nationality. This doctrine took its deepest root in Germany where language was almost the only bond of nationality, and it led to the great researches in philology associated with the names of Humboldt, Wolf, the brothers Grimm and Lachmann. On account of the fact that the romanticists maintained the hopeless ness of any detailed analysis of historical causa tion, their philosophy of history ran in a gvkious circle.* giving any scientific explana tion of the development of the spirit of a na tion, they attributed the peculiarities of national institutions, laws, literature and government to the genius of the nation, and then represented national character as the product of the art, lit erature, laws and institutions of a people. But in spite of the semi-obscurantic tendencies and the philosophical crudities of the romanticists, they must be given credit for having done much to correct the vicious catastrophic theory of the rationalists, and for having emphasized the ele ment of unconscious growth in historical de velopment and the vital truth of the organic unity of a cultural complex. It was left for Lamprecht, nearly a century later, to take over what was really valuable in the romantic doc trines and work them over into his famous theory of historical development as a process of transformations and mutations within the collective psychology of both the nation and humanity.
The expressions of romanticism in his toriography were many and varied. Its doc trines were employed in the field of the in vestigation of legal origins by Karl Friedrich Eichhorn (1781-1854), whose 'Political and Legal History of Germany) was devoted pri marily to the study of early German law; and, above all, by Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779 1861) in his 'History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages,' which was the most able and dogmatic defense of the conception of law as a product of the national °genius* of a people. In the field of the history and analysis of re ligion and literature it received its most notable expression in Francois Rene Auguste de Chat eatibriand's (1768-1848) 'Genius of Christian ity); in Madame de Stael's (1760-1817) (Liter ature in Its Relation to Social in Abel Francois Villemain's (1790-1870) 'Sketch of the Eighteenth Century,) and in the 'His tory German Poetry) by Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-71). Romanticism entered the philosophy of history in the works of Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), F. W. J. Schelling (1775 1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1771-1831). Schlegel viewed the historical process as the gradual restoration in man of the lost image of God through the operation of a divinely revealed religion. Schelling in
terpreted historical development as the gradual revelation of God through the operation of the unconscious forces of creative genius. Hegel's 'Philosophy of History) was founded upon his dialectic system of antithesis followed by synthesis, and upon his spiritualistic interpreta tion of history as "the necessary progress in the consciousness of liberty.* Working from these premises he adapted the facts of history in such a way as to portray the successive migrations of the gWeltgeist* from the Orient to Lutheran Germany, bringing with it a continually expand ing consciousness and realization of liberty. Hegel's rather grotesque system was purged of its most apparent crudities and applied with much greater learning and accuracy by Ferdi nand Christian Baur (1792-1860) to the history of Christianity, and by Edpuard Zeller (1814 1908) to the reconstruction of early Greek phi losophy. The narrative school of romanticist historians was not only dominated by the gen eral theories enumerated above, but by the literary canons of the historical novels of Walter Scott with their great emphasis upon the element of "local color.* This tendency was really anti-historical, in that it aimed primarily to destroy all sense of historical perspective and to portray episodes or periods in the past in such a manner as to make them have the vividness and intimacy of contemporary events. It was a contribution to literature rather than to scientific history. Its only real impulse to improved historical writing lay in 'the fact that its literary attractiveness awakened an interest in history on a wider scale than ever before, and brought into the field many eminent scholars whose individual contributions to his torical knowledge were greater than those of all of the narrative school of romanticists com bined. Of this variety of narrative romanticist historical writing the most important products were the 'History of the Conquest of England by the Normans) and the 'Narratives of the Merovingian Period) by Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) ; the 'History of the Dukes of Bur gundy> by Baron de Barante (1782-1866), and the of the Italian States) by Heinrich Leo (1799-1878). A still further intensification of the subjective element in the narrative school was reached in the works of Michelet, Carlyle and Froude, where an attempt was made not only to being the reader in immediate touch with the setting of the events narrated, but also with the personal impressions and attitudes of the author. The (History of France) of Jules Michelet (1798-1874) was the greatest product of French historical literature, The author was dominated by a passionate attachment to his country, possessed a marvelous creative Imagination and a style notable for its word painting and its power of syffibolical presenta tion, and stood forth as the great historical apologist for French democracy. The best por tions are those dealing with the picturesque figures of the Middle Ages and the scenes of the French Revolution. The least attractive personality of the group and the least worthy as a historian was Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). In radical contrast to Michelet he was pos sessed of a sour contempt for the masses and an equally exaggerated interest in the pic turesque figures of history. To him history was but the collective biography of the con spicuous figures through the ages, and he was responsible more than any other historian for the conventional disdain of the modern his torian for those commonplace things of daily life which have had incomparably greater in fluence upon social development than the pic turesque personalities. Carlyle indulged his prejudices in his 'Letters and Speeches of Cromwell,' his 'History of Frederick the Great' and his 'French Revolution.' While possessing only moderate value as sources of information, on account of the writer's uncon trolled prejudices and his utter lack of critical method, they earned him the undisputed position as "the greatest of English portrait painters." While his name has been adopted to designate chronic inaccuracy in historical investigation, Carlyle's disciple, James Anthony Froude (1818-94), was a much abler historian than his master. His faults were those of one constitu tionally rather than carelessly or intentionally inaccurate, as he had a keen appreciation of the value of critical methods and his work was the first extended English history written on the basis of unpublished documents. His 'His tory of England from the Fall of Woolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada' was an epic of English deliverance from the "slavery of Rome,' and his Carlylian attraction for great personalities found ample scope for expression in his portraits of Henry VIII and Burleigh. As a writer he was approached among English historians only by Macaulay. "No other Eng lish historian,' says Gooch, "has possessed a style so easy, so flowing, so transparent.* America found its sole distinguished represen tative of the school of Carlyle and Froude in John Lothrop Motley (1814-77), who devoted his life to a narration of the struggle of the Netherlands against Spain. Surpassing even Freeman in his passion for liberty, he found a most congenial subject in tracing the successful revolution of the Dutch and the establishment of their republic. For word painting and vivid description of dramatic scenes only Carlyle has equalled him among historians writing in the English tongue. While the conceptions of romanticism gained some dominion over the minds of greater scholars, such as Ranke, they served rather to stimulate the author's interest in history than to vitiate his scholarship. With its emphasis on the doctrine of the "genius of a nation' and its deep emotional basis, romantic ism was a powerful influence in stimulating the nationalistic historiography which dominated the historical writing of the 19th century.