based upon psychology, which, in his view, holds
among the sciences of mind (Geisteswissenschaften) the same place (that
of a Grundwissenschaft) which mechanics holds among the sciences of
nature. History, by the same comparison, corresponds to biology, and,
according to him, it can only become scientific if it is reduced to
general concepts (Begriffe). Historical movements and events are of
a psychical character, and Lamprecht conceives a given phase of
civilisation as "a collective psychical condition (seelischer
Gesamtzustand)" controlling the period, "a diapason which penetrates
all psychical phenomena and thereby all historical events of the time."
("Die kulturhistorische Methode", Berlin, 1900, page 26.) He has worked
out a series of such phases, "ages of changing psychical diapason," in
his "Deutsche Geschichte" with the aim of showing that all the feelings
and actions of each age can be explained by the diapason; and has
attempted to prove that these diapasons are exhibited in other social
developments, and are consequently not singular but typical. He
maintains further that these ages succeed each other in a definite
order; the principle being that the collective psychical development
begins with the homogeneity of all the individual members of a society
and, through heightened psychical activity, advances in the form of a
continually increasing differentiation of the individuals (this is akin
to the Spencerian formula). This process, evolving psychical freedom
from psychical constraint, exhibits a series of psychical phenomena
which define successive periods of civilisation. The process depends on
two simple principles, that no idea can disappear without leaving behind
it an effect or influence, and that all psychical life, whether in
a person or a society, means change, the acquisition of new mental
contents. It follows that the new have to come to terms with the old,
and this leads to a synthesis which determines the character of a new
age. Hence the ages of civilisation are defined as the "highest
concepts for subsuming without exception all psychical phenomena of
the development of human societies, that is, of all historical events."
(Ibid. pages 28, 29.) Lamprecht deduces the idea of a special historical
science, which might be called "historical ethnology," dealing with the
ages of civilisation, and bearing the same relation to (descriptive or
narrative) history as ethnology to ethnography. Such a science