reflects his faith that there is meaning in the midst of flux; that all fits into a divine mystery; that “world history was inconceivable without a cosmic plan governing it.”63 Each idea reflects one aspect of infinity. Although it is impossible for man to understand the “plans of this cosmic government” (Weltregierung), he can intuitively gain glimpses of it (erahnden) through the ideas.64
Thus, despite his insistence upon flux and chaos in history, Humboldt preserves his faith that in a higher sense history is a meaningful drama. Humboldt makes two assumptions fundamental to the optimism that distinguishes the Historismus of the nineteenth century from the radical relativization of values with which historicism has been identified in twentieth-century Germany. He assumes that individuals have an inner structure and character, that they are not merely a bundle of passions. He therefore admonishes: “One must seek the Best and the Highest that the subject has attained in all his diverse activities. This we link together into one Whole, a Whole that we consider to constitute its unique and essential character. Everything that does not fit into this character, we may consider to be incidental.”65 He also assumes that the great diversities in history all fitted in some mysterious way into a harmonious whole; that if left to their free course all historical tendencies were good; and that, in this best of all possible worlds, evil consisted of the attempt to divert the natural tendencies of history.
The third aspect to be found in Humboldt’s essays—recognition of the role of the irrational in history, joined to a faith in an ultimate meaning in the flux of human events—poses special problems for the historian. Humboldt was the first nineteenth-century writer to work out a theory of knowledge which took these insights into account.
A first important methodological consideration arose for Humboldt from the fact that in approaching history the historian is dealing with “living,” not with “dead” matter. Here, similar to later writers, Humboldt makes a distinction between the methods applicable to the “natural sciences” and those proper to the “historical sciences.” However, Humboldt never conceives physical nature to be entirely dead or nonhistorical. The living can never be approached as something static that might be viewed under fixed conditions at one given point of time. To comprehend a living being, we must see it as a totality and understand its inner essence. For Humboldt this cannot be achieved by mere external description, but requires harmonious use of “rational observation” (beobachtender Verstand) and “poetic imagination” (dichtende Einbildungskraft).66
But as Humboldt developed his theory of individuality into a metaphysical doctrine of ideas, these conditions for historical understanding, which he presented at the turn of the century in “The Eighteenth Century,” no longer sufficed. Now, in “On the Tasks of the Writer of History,” he sees history as the only guide to an approximate understanding of the “totality of being.”67
The task of the historian, as presented in the latter essay, is to depict what has happened (Darstellung des Geschehenen). Toward that end he must begin with a simple description. But what has happened (das Geschehene), Humboldt hastens to point out, is “only in part accessible to the senses. The rest has to be felt (empfunden), inferred (geschlossen), or divined (errathen)” Only fragments are apparent to the observer. “What binds these fragments, what puts the individual piece in its true light and gives form to the whole remains beyond the reach of direct observation.” Facts are not enough. “The truth of all that happens requires the addition of that above mentioned invisible element of every fact and this the writer of history must add.”68
The role Humboldt now assigns to the historian is a much more ambitious one than previously outlined in his earlier essay. It involves more than merely grasping the character of an individual personality or of a nation. Through the study of the individual, the historian now could gain general knowledge, once the task of the philosopher. But if the historian’s intent (the search of ultimate truth) now resembled that of the traditional philosopher, his method, the only one by which such truth could be approached, had to remain that of the historian, according to Humboldt.69 The historical sense requires “a feeling for the real” in its “flux” and “timeboundness,” yet it also involves the search for meaning.
The historian, Humboldt stresses, does not merely arrange facts meaninglessly; he attempts to discover links, to understand the events in a larger context. This distinguishes him from a mere pedant. “The historian worthy of the name must present every event as part of a whole.”70 He recognizes on one hand, the “inner spiritual freedom” of every individuality and, on the other, the dependence of every event on preceding and accompanying causes. He perceives that “reality, not withstanding its apparent haphazardness, is governed by necessity.” But to impose concepts upon the actual events is to violate this historical reality; not to go beyond the bare facts is to forego meaning. Not merely the understanding of a wider context, but the understanding of a concrete, individual historical situation requires more than the mere presentation of facts.
This interrelation of facts and ideas demands a twofold methodological approach. The first requirement, Humboldt counsels, is an “exact, impartial, critical examination of the events.”71 Here is the core of the critical method, the establishment of facts, the weighing of evidence through the empirical and rational approach to sources, documents, and the like. But in the search for meaning, for the “links within the matter under investigation,” this approach does not suffice. The idea must be comprehended, and the act of comprehension (Begreifen) requires resources other than those of purely conscious perception. In his search of the idea, the historian resembles the artist; only he is not permitted the latter’s free use of phantasy, but is much more closely bound to reality. The critical, empirical approach to this reality has to be supplemented by “intuiting that which cannot be reached by this means,” but by intuition (Ahnden) which proceeds from the concrete facts.72 This intuition for Humboldt implies that the “ideas” which express themselves in concrete reality, can be comprehended only approximately and dimly. But it also assumes that meaningful relationships exist. For man’s intuitive understanding (Ahnden) or rational comprehension (Begreifen) of such truth
presupposes within the comprehendent something analogous to what later will actually be comprehended, a pre-existing, original agreement between subject and object. Comprehension involves not merely development of subjectivity nor taking from an object, but both simultaneously.… When two persons are separated by a gulf, no bridge of understanding can lead from one to the other. In order to understand one another, one must in a sense already have understood each other to begin with.73
However, this theory of understanding assumes a common bond not entirely compatible with Humboldt’s view of the radical uniqueness of individuals, a contradiction of which he was never fully aware.
“On the Tasks of the Writer of History” was Humboldt’s last great contribution to historical theory. Two years later, Ranke’s Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples appeared with the famous methodological appendix, “In Criticism of Recent Historians.” But the basic metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of the great tradition of German historicism from Ranke to Meinecke had been already formulated by Humboldt. With his essay “On the Tasks of the Writer of History,” the philosophical theory of German historicism was complete. The break with Aufklärung and Humanitätsideal was now very real. Humboldt had always seen in history a vital, dynamic force which could not be directed by rational planning. He had never shared the faith of the philosophes in the possibility of reorganizing society along rational lines. Nevertheless, he had been firmly convinced that the basic unit in society is the individual. His concept of liberty had been cosmopolitan rather than national.
In the three decades that separated the essay “On the Limits of the State” from “The Tasks of the Writer of History,” Humboldt came to recognize the primacy of collective forces and he identified these with nationality. Humboldt recognized the
