42]
which are by no means always the expression of the collective will;
and that the appearance of such personalities at the given moments is
not a necessary outcome of the conditions and cannot be deduced. Nor
is there any proof that, if such and such an individual had not been
born, some one else would have arisen to do what he did. In some cases
there is no reason to think that what happened need ever have come to
pass. In other cases, it seems evident that the actual change was
inevitable, but in default of the man who initiated and guided it, it
might have been postponed, and, postponed or not, might have borne a
different cachet. I may illustrate by an instance which has just come
under my notice. Modern painting was founded by Giotto, and the
Italian expedition of Charles VIII, near the close of the sixteenth
century, introduced into France the fashion of imitating Italian
painters. But for Giotto and Charles VIII, French painting might have
been very different. It may be said that "if Giotto had not appeared,
some other great imitator would have played a role analogous to his,
and that without Charles VIII there would have been the commerce with
Italy, which in the long run would have sufficed to place France in
relation with Italian artists. But the equivalent of Giotto might have
been deferred for a century and probably would have been different;
and commercial relations would have required ages to produce the
_rayonnement imitatif_ of Italian art in France, which the expedition
of the royal adventurer provoked in a few years."[243] Instances
furnished by political history are simply endless. Can we conjecture
how events would have moved if the son of Philip of Macedon had been
an incompetent? The aggressive action of Prussia which astonished
Europe in 1740 determined the subsequent history of Germany; but that
action was anything but inevitable; it depended entirely on the
personality of Frederick the Great.

Hence it may be argued that the action of individual wills is a
determining and disturbing factor, too significant and effective to
allow history to be grasped by sociological formulae. The types and
general forms of development which the sociologist attempts to
disengage can only assist the historian in understanding the actual
course of events. It is in the special domains of economic history and
_Culturgeschichte_ which have come to the front in modern times that
generalisation is most fruitful, but