After having concentrated the mind upon a thought of Vico and of Hegel, can it be possible to set ourselves down to examine those of others which afford material to the controversies of historians and methodologists of history of our time? These represent the usual form in which appear the problems concerning the relation between the individual and the Idea, between pragmatic and idealistic history. Perhaps the patience necessary for the descent into low haunts is meritorious and our duty; perhaps there may be some useful conclusion to be drawn from these common disputes; but I must beg to be excused for not taking part in them and for limiting myself to the sole remark that the question which has been for some time discussed, whether history be the history of 'masses' or of 'individuals,' would be laughable in its very enunciation, if we were to understand by 'mass' what the word implies, a complex of individuals. And since it is not a good method to attribute laughable ideas to adversaries, it may be supposed that on this occasion what is meant by 'mass' is something else, which moves the mass of individuals. In this case, anyone can see that the problem is the same as that which has just been examined. The conflict between 'collectivistic' and 'individualistic' historiography will never be composed so long as the former assigns to collectivity the power that is creative of ideas and institutions, and the latter assigns it to the individual of genius, for both affirmations are true in what they include and false in what they exclude--that is to say, not only in their exclusion of the opposed thesis, but also in the tacit exclusion, which they both make, of totality as idea.