time and space relations, in order to compare them and classify them; as
soon as historians begin to emphasize the typical and representative
rather than the unique character of events, history ceases to be history
and becomes sociology.

The differences here indicated between history and sociology are based
upon a more fundamental distinction between the historical and the
natural sciences first clearly defined by Windelband, the historian of
philosophy, in an address to the faculty of the University of Strassburg
in 1894.

The distinction between natural science and history begins at
the point where we seek to convert facts into knowledge. Here
again we observe that the one (natural science) seeks to
formulate laws, the other (history) to portray events. In the
one case thought proceeds from the description of particulars
to the general relations. In the other case it clings to a
genial depiction of the individual object or event. For the
natural scientist the object of investigation which cannot be
repeated never has, as such, scientific value. It serves his
purpose only so far as it may be regarded as a type or as a
special instance of a class from which the type may be deduced.
The natural scientist considers the single case only so far as
he can see in it the features which serve to throw light upon a
general law. For the historian the problem is to revive and
call up into the present, in all its particularity, an event in
the past. His aim is to do for an actual event precisely what
the artist seeks to do for the object of his imagination. It is
just here that we discern the kinship between history and art,
between the historian and the writer of literature. It is for
this reason that natural science emphasized the abstract; the
historian, on the other hand, is interested mainly in the
concrete.

The fact that natural science emphasizes the abstract and
history the concrete will become clearer if we compare the
results of the researches of the two sciences. However finespun
the conceptions may be which the historical critic uses in
working over his materials, the final goal of such study is
always to create out of the mass of events a vivid portrait of
the past. And what history offers us is pictures of men and of
human life, with all the wealth of their individ