century. But in the spirit of the Aufklarung, that eighteenth-century
Enlightenment to which they belonged, they were concerned to judge all
phenomena before the tribunal of reason; and the apotheosis of "reason"
tended to foster a certain superior a priori attitude, which was
not favourable to objective treatment and was incompatible with
a "historical sense." Moreover the traditions of pragmatical
historiography had by no means disappeared.

3. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the meaning of genetic
history was fully realised. "Genetic" perhaps is as good a word as can
be found for the conception which in this century was applied to so many
branches of knowledge in the spheres both of nature and of mind. It
does not commit us to the doctrine proper of evolution, nor yet to any
teleological hypothesis such as is implied in "progress." For history
it meant that the present condition of the human race is simply and
strictly the result of a causal series (or set of causal series)--a
continuous succession of changes, where each state arises causally out
of the preceding; and that the business of historians is to trace this
genetic process, to explain each change, and ultimately to grasp the
complete development of the life of humanity. Three influential writers,
who appeared at this stage and helped to initiate a new period
of research, may specially be mentioned. Ranke in 1824 definitely
repudiated the pragmatical view which ascribes to history the duties
of an instructress, and with no less decision renounced the function,
assumed by the historians of the Aufklarung, to judge the past; it
was his business, he said, merely to show how things really happened.
Niebuhr was already working in the same spirit and did more than any
other writer to establish the principle that historical transactions
must be related to the ideas and conditions of their age. Savigny about
the same time founded the "historical school" of law. He sought to show
that law was not the creation of an enlightened will, but grew out of
custom and was developed by a series of adaptations and rejections, thus
applying the conception of evolution. He helped to diffuse the notion
that all the institutions of a society or a notion are as closely
interconnected as the parts of a living organism.

4. The conception of the history of man as a causal development meant
the elevation of historical inquiry to the dignity of a science. Just
as the stud