The decline of the West, Volume 1 : $b Form and actualitySpengler, Oswald
Philosophy
The decline of the West, Volume 1 : $b Form and actuality
Spengler, Oswald
Civilization -- History
There is, therefore, not a science _of_ history but an ancillary science
_for_ history, which ascertains that which has been. For the historical
outlook itself the data are always symbols. Scientific research, on the
contrary, is science and only science. In virtue of its technical origin
and purpose it sets out to find data and laws of the causal sort and
nothing else, and from the moment that it turns its glance upon
something else it becomes _Metaphysics_, something trans-scientific. And
just because this is so, historical and natural-science data are
different. The latter consistently repeat themselves, the former never.
The latter are _truths_, the former _facts_. However closely related
incidentals and causals may appear to be in the everyday picture,
fundamentally they belong to different worlds. As it is beyond question
that the shallowness of a man’s history-picture (the man himself,
therefore) is in proportion to the dominance in it of frank incidentals,
so it is beyond question that the emptiness of written history is in
proportion to the degree in which it makes the establishment of purely
factual relations its object. The more deeply a man lives History, the
more rarely will he receive “causal” impressions and the more surely
will he be sensible of their utter insignificance. If the reader
examines Goethe’s writings in natural science, he will be astounded to
find how “living nature” can be set forth without formulas, without
laws, almost without a trace of the causal. For him, Time is not a
distance but a feeling. But the experience of last and deepest things is
practically denied to the ordinary savant who dissects and arranges
purely critically and allows himself neither to contemplate nor to feel.
In the case of History, on the contrary, this power of experience is
_the_ requisite. And thus is justified the paradox that the less a
historical researcher has to do with real science, the better it is for
his history.
To elucidate once more by a diagram:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account