"With us the word 'history,' like its equivalents in all modern languages, signifies either a form of literary composition or the appropriate subject or matter of such composition—either a narrative of events, or events which may be narrated. It is impossible to free the term from this doubleness and ambiguity of meaning. Nor is it, on the whole, to be desired. The advantages of having one term which may, with ordinary caution, be innocuously applied to two things so related, more than counterbalances the dangers involved in two things so distinct having the same name. … Since the word history has two very different meanings, it obviously cannot have merely one definition. To define an order of facts and a form of literature in the same terms—to suppose that when either of them is defined the other is defined—is so absurd that one would probably not believe it could be seriously done were it not so often done. But to do so has been the rule rather than the exception. The majority of so-called definitions of history are definitions only of the records of history. They relate to history as narrated and written, not to history as evolved and acted; in other words, although given as the only definitions of history needed, they do not apply to history itself, but merely to accounts of history. They may tell us what constitutes a book of history, but they cannot tell us what the history is with which all books of history are occupied. It is, however, with history in this latter sense that a student of the science or philosophy of history is mainly concerned. … If by history be meant history in its widest sense, the best definition of history as a form of literature is, perhaps, either the very old one, 'the narration of events,' or W. von Humboldt's, 'the exhibition of what has happened' (die Darstellung des Geschehenen). {1648} The excellence of these definitions lies in their clear and explicit indication of what history as effectuated or transacted is. It consists of events; it is das Geschehene. It is the entire course of events in time. It is all that has happened precisely as it happened. Whatever happens is history. Eternal and unchanging being has no history. Things or phenomena considered as existent, connected, and comprehended in space, compose what is called nature as distinguished from history. … Probably Droysen has found a neater and terser formula for it in German than any which the English language could supply. Nature he describes as 'das Nebeneinander des Seienden,' and history as 'das Nacheinander des Gewordenen.' … The only kind of history with which we have here directly to deal is that kind of it to which the name is generally restricted, history par excellence, human history, what has happened within the sphere of human agency