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CHAPTER XXXVIII.[1]
ON HISTORY.
In the passage of the first volume referred to below I have fully shown that more is achieved for our knowledge of mankind by poetry than by history, and why this is so; inasmuch as more real instruction was to be expected from the former than from the latter. Aristotle has also confessed this, for he says: "(
Greek characters)" (et res magis philosophica, et melior poësis est quam historia[2]), De poët., c. 9. Yet, in order to cause no misunderstanding as to the value of history, I wish here to express my thoughts about it.
In every class and species of things the facts are innumerable, the individuals infinite in number, the variety of their differences unapproachable. At the first glance at them the curious mind becomes giddy; however much it investigates, it sees itself condemned to ignorance. But then comes science: it separates the innumerable multitude, arranges it under generic conceptions, these again under conceptions of species, whereby it opens the path to a knowledge of the general and the particular, which also comprehends the innumerable individuals, for it holds good of all without one being obliged to consider each particular for itself. Thus it promises satisfaction to the investigating mind. Then all
1 This chapter is connected with § 51 of the first volume.
2 Let me remark in passing that from this opposition of (Greek characters) and (Greek characters)the origin, and also the peculiar significance, of the first word comes out with more than ordinary distinctness; it signifies that which is made, invented, in opposition to what is discovered.
