without it, because they refuse to accept of causal explanation, or the frightful Unknowable, which was placed at the head of histories of the real, after so great a fuss being made about that Titan science which was ready to scale the skies. But since romanticism had left spirit and nature without fusion, the one facing the other, it was just that if in the first place spirit swallowed up nature without being able to digest it (because, as had been laid down, it was indigestible), now nature was engaged in doing the same thing to spirit, and with the same result. So just and logical was this that not a few of the old idealists went over to the crassest materialism and positivism, and that confession of not being able to see their way in the confusion was at once instructive and suggestive, as was also the perplexity decorated with the name of 'agnosticism.' And as the precise affirmation of the positivity of history represented an advance in thought, so the antithesis of materialism, pushed to an extreme, was an advance in the preparation of the new problem and in the new way of solving the relation between spirit and nature. _Oportet ut scandala, eveniant,_ and this means that even scandal, the scandal of the absurd, and of offensive false criticisms of human conscience, is an advance. VIII THE NEW HISTORIOGRAPHY CONCLUSION The romantic current not only maintained itself in its excesses during the dominion of positivism, and, as we have shown, insinuated itself even into its naturalistic antithesis, but it also persisted in its genuine form. And although we have not spoken of pedantic imitators and conservatives--whose significance is slight in the history of thought, that is to say, confined to the narrow sphere in which they were compelled to think for themselves--we have nevertheless recorded the preservation of romanticism in the eclecticism of Ranke, who adhered to the theories of Humboldt (another 'diplomatist'). Idealistic and romantic motives continued to illuminate the intellect and soul among the philosophers, from Humboldt to Lotze and from Hartmann to Wundt and those who corresponded to them in other countries. The like occurred in historiography properly so called, and could not but happen, because, if the formulas of agnosticism and of positivism had been followed to the letter, all light of thought would have been extinguished in blind mechanicism--that is to say, in nothing--and no historical representation would have been possible. Thus political, social, philosophical, literary, and artistic history continued to make acquisitions, if not equally important with those of the romantic period (the surroundings were far more favourable to the natural sciences and to mathematics than to history), yet noteworthy. This is set forth in a copious volume upon historiography (I refer to the work of Fueter already several times mentioned in this connexion). There due honour will be found accorded to the great work accomplished by