Religion and the Rise of History: Martin Luther and the Cultural Revolution in Germany, 1760-1810

By Leonard S. Smith

As a historical inquiry and synthesis, this intellectual history is the first study to apply the ideal-type or model-building methodology of Otto Hintze (1861-1940) to Western historical thought or to what R. G. Collingwood called "The Idea of History," for it contains succinct and useful models for seeing and teaching classical, Christian, and modern professional historiography.
Religion and the Rise of History is also the first work to suggest that, in addition to his well-known paradoxical, simul, and/or "at-the-same-time" way of thinking and viewing life, Martin Luther also held to a way that was deeply incarnational, dynamic, and/or "in-with-and-under." This dual vision and "a Lutheran ethos" strongly influenced Leibniz, Hamann, and Herder, and was therefore a matter of considerable significance for the rise of a distinctly modern form of historical consciousness (commonly called "historicism") in Protestant Germany.
Smith's essay suggests a new time period for the formative age of modern German thought, culture, and education: "The Cultural Revolution in Germany." This age began in the early 1760s and culminated in 1810 with the founding of the University of Berlin, the first fully "modern" and "modernizing" university.
This university first became the recognized center for the study of history, however, through the work of Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). Here the story shows how a young Ranke derived his individualizing way of thinking and viewing life mainly from Luther, how his life-work is the best example in Western literature of the rise of history from a calling to a profession, and how the three-way discussion between Troeltsch, Meinecke, and Hintze concerning the nature of modern historical thought was of central importance for the reorientation of Western social-historical thought in the twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781621891161

Leonard S. Smith

Leonard S. Smith was Emeritus Professor of History at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. His other books are Religion and the Rise of History (Cascade Books, 2008) and Martin Luther's Two Ways of Viewing Life and the Educational Foundation of a Lutheran Ethos (Pickwick Publications, 2011).

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preface

One of the characteristics of our time is the shift of social and cultural history from an emphasis on broad works of synthesis and manifestations of collective life to various forms of microhistory and the history of everyday life. Historians and history teachers, however, have always had the task of placing events within a large and meaningful framework. As a historical inquiry and synthesis, this essay is an innovative work in three main respects.

It is the first study to apply the ideal-type or model-building methodology of Otto Hintze (1861–1940) to Western historiography as a whole, or to what R. G. Collingwood called The Idea of History, for it contains succinct and useful models for seeing, understanding, and teaching (1) the classical historiography of Greece and Rome, (2) Christian historiography from the time of St. Augustine to Voltaire, and (3) a distinctly modern type of Western historiography.

Second, it is the first work to suggest that in addition to his well-known paradoxical, simul, or his at-the-same-time way of thinking and viewing life, Martin Luther also had a deeply incarnational, dynamic, or in-with-and-under way. This dual vision strongly influenced Leibniz, Hamann, Herder, and Ranke and was therefore a matter of considerable significance for what Friedrich Meinecke (1862–1954) called the rise of historicism.

Third, this essay suggests a new way of seeing, dating, and naming the formative stage of modern German thought, culture, and education. This period began in the early 1760s and culminated in 1810 with the founding of the University of Berlin, the first fully modern and modernizing university, and the Prussian and German Gymnasium.

Behind the title for this essay the reader will find four main questions: (1) Is the term the Cultural Revolution a useful designation for capturing and teaching the formative stage in the development of modern German education, thought, and culture? (2) Since a new historical consciousness—commonly called historicism—and the rise of a new type of Western historiography were important aspects of this Cultural Revolution, and since they arose first in Protestant Germany, was the Lutheran religious tradition especially conducive for the rise of these aspects of this revolution and of modern life? (3) Did Martin Luther have a second basic way of thinking and viewing life in addition to his well-known paradoxical simul, or at-the-same-time way? (4) If so, how have these two ways shaped a distinctively Lutheran ethos and sense of calling?

To understand the nature and rise of modern historical thought in the West, one must have a mental picture of Western historical thought as a whole. This inquiry is based on the conviction that such a picture can be presented most simply, clearly, and distinctly through three historical ideal types, or models that are based on a perception of time. It is also based on the view that a distinctly modern type of Western historiography and kind of historical thought came to fruition most of all in the work of Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), the greatest and most influential of all modern professional historians. Although one of the main purposes of this essay is to suggest a new way—or at least another way—of looking at modern historiography as a whole, the main focus is, as the title indicates, the significance of religion for the rise of history.

Why, however, did the main characteristics of modern historical thought and modern professional historiography develop first in Germany and mainly by scholars who were raised and educated within the Lutheran tradition? Although many Christians since the time of St. Augustine have believed that only God knows why things happen, most historians can agree that it is the job of the historian to say how something happened and how something came to be. Thus one of the purposes of this inquiry is to suggest some connections between Luther’s ways of thinking and viewing life and the rise of modern historical thought in Germany during the five decades from 1760 to the founding of the University of Berlin in the year 1810. There is no attempt here, however, to assert a cause-and-effect relationship between Martin Luther’s ways of viewing life and either the rise of historicism or a distinctly modern type of Western historiography during that great humanistic revolution that can be called the Cultural Revolution in Germany.

The word Historismus, usually translated historicism, became a word of central importance in Western historical thought primarily through the work of three great scholars at the University of Berlin during and after World War I: Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), Friedrich Meinecke, and Otto Hintze. Since the present inquiry is a supplement to their pioneer work on this subject, the first debt of a general nature that I want to acknowledge is to them.

This essay is also an attempt to apply the ideal-type methodology of Otto Hintze—the great pioneer historian of the twentieth century for the development of what he called comparative constitutional history, and that others have called comparative, structural, institutional, or social history—to the study of Western historiography. Basically, however, this essay is a twentieth-century kind of historical inquiry that Meinecke called Geistesgeschichte, which the English-speaking world calls intellectual history or the history of ideas, and for which he was the great pioneer historian within the guild of professional historians in the twentieth century.

The fourth great early twentieth-century scholar to whom I am indebted in a general way is Max Weber. While Hintze was a great pioneer for the development of a comparative method and an ideal-type methodology for the discipline called history, Weber was the great pioneer social scientist for the development of a comparative method and an ideal-type methodology for the social sciences. In the present essay, readers will find not only a model for the study of modern Western historiography based on Hintze’s ideal-type methodology, but also a further exploration of Weber’s ideas of rationalization and disenchantment of the world in connection with his ideal type of a Lutheran sense of calling as contained in his brilliant, enormously stimulating, and controversial essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Before I acknowledge my other debts, however, I want to relate two personal experiences on which this inquiry is based and then to make a few general remarks about what one can expect or not expect to find in this essay.

The first personal experience took place when I was reading a passage from a young Leopold Ranke who was answering (in 1828) a critic of his first work, his epoch-making Histories of the Latin and Germanic Nations from 1494 to 1514 (1824). This passage, Ranke said, is part of the attempt I have made to present the general directly through the particular without long digression. Here I have sought to approach no J. Müller or no ancient writer but the appearance itself, just as it emerges, only externally particularity, internally—and so I understand Leibnitz—a generality, significance, spirit . . . In and with the event I have sought to portray its course and spirit, and I have strained to ascertain its characteristic traits.

¹

When I first read this passage in 1971, the reference to the general and the particular, generality and particularity, external and internal, appearance and spirit, and especially the way he used the prepositions in and with jumped out at me; for both the passage as a whole and especially the latter two prepositions sounded very Lutheran to me. Was it possible, I asked myself, that the connected prepositions (especially for Lutherans)—in, with, and under—could be a key to understanding not only Ranke’s way of writing history but also the Lutheran tradition as a whole? Could Ranke’s way of writing history be called not only an at -the-same-time way of viewing and writing history but also an in-with-and under way? Did not Ranke always try to present the general or the universal in, with, under, and through the particular? And was not this the best way to teach students how to write history? But why did Ranke refer to Leibniz in this passage?

The answer to the latter question soon came to me (1972) when a colleague was introducing Leibniz and the Monadology to a select group of first-year college students in a team-taught, interdisciplinary (history, literature, philosophy, and religion) honors course called Humanities Tutorial. As he helped those young minds picture those unique soul-like substances called monads, each programmed by God to do its thing in and through the composite body that it directed and within an organic, dynamic, pluralistic, harmonious, and God-given universe that was the best of all possible worlds, the connection suddenly became clear!

At that moment I became quite excited, for now—for the first time—I could see the origins of the German idealist tradition and the main link between Luther and Melanchthon, on the one hand, and Herder, Ranke, and the German idealist tradition through Troeltsch and Meinecke on the other. Now I could see how, at least in some respects, the Lutheran religious tradition was conducive to the rise of German historicism and to a distinctly modern type of Western historiography. Thus this passage from the young Ranke and these two experiences were the starting points of this decades-long historical inquiry.

The first general remark that I want to make is that since this essay is a broad and interdisciplinary introduction to the rise of modern historical thought through the formative years of Leopold von Ranke, there is no attempt to include the vast amount of literature on each of the individuals discussed here. In my notes I have only sought to give credit to the sources that I actually used and not to all the ones that I read or that I could or should have read and used.

Second, this essay is written primarily for a general audience: students, teachers, professors, pastors, priests, or anyone interested in learning more about Martin Luther and a Lutheran ethos in relation to the idea of history and to the rise of a distinctly modern kind of historical consciousness. To aid the reader I have made extensive use of quotations from primary works, as well as from helpful secondary studies, so that he or she can be directly engaged with the thought of each of the major figures included in this essay and with the views of specialists whose research and knowledge are especially helpful.

Third, each chapter begins with a statement of the problem behind that particular part of the inquiry. Here the reader will find not only the basic questions that I am trying to answer but also some background material so that he or she does not have to be an expert in any of these subjects or to refer to other sources. At the same time this rather unusual device should help the reader decide whether my attempts to deal with these large questions are helpful, convincing, and true because they are based on the evidence.

Fourth, since this work as a whole is a supplement to the ways that Troeltsch, Hintze, and Meinecke defined, used, and viewed the term Historismus, some readers might want to start with part 3 of chapter 5, Otto Hintze and the Demystifying of the Rankean View of History (221–52), for it includes a sketch of their great debate over the nature of modern historical thought and the significance of this debate for the idea of history.

Since this essay is based on my entire educational experience, the list of persons I have known who contributed either directly or indirectly to this study is quite long. First, I want to express thanks and gratitude to my father, the Rev. A. Leonard Smith (1894–1960). I am indebted to him not only for the traditional kind of religious education that I received and that is portrayed in chapter 2, but also because he—more than anyone I have known—personified the Lutheran idea of a calling.

Second, I am grateful to professors Allan Pfnister, James I. Dowie, and Fritiof Ander for awakening in me a love of intellectual and cultural history and for teaching me to see, feel, and appreciate the connection of individuals, ideas, and events in history.

Third, I am deeply indebted to Dietrich Gerhard, a student of Friedrich Meinecke at the University of Berlin, the Assistant Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen, Germany, in the 1960s, and the director of my PhD dissertation (1967) at Washington University (in St. Louis, Missouri). Professor Gerhard was the best trained, most knowledgeable, and wisest professional historian I have known, and he was also my connecting link with the great historiographical traditions at Göttingen and Berlin.

Fourth, I want to honor and give thanks for another great teacher at Washington University in the early 1960s, Professor Jack Hexter. For Dr. Hexter, doing history was an art and a craft, and no one I have known was better at teaching history as a craft and how to write history than he. Both for my training as a graduate student and as a professor/student in his National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Seminar on Writing History at Yale University in 1978, I am indebted to him.

Fifth, I want to express my gratitude to Hermann Heimpel, Rudolf Vierhaus, and all the kind and helpful individuals at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen for their gracious hospitality and assistance since the year 1962.

Sixth, I want to acknowledge my debt to those teacher/scholars and colleagues in the interdisciplinary Core Program (1964–1969) at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and The Humanities Tutorial (1971–1984) at California Lutheran University. Especially I am grateful to Dr. John Kuethe for his Socratic way of tutoring our students and me in the whole course of Western philosophy and for introducing me to the writings of St. Augustine, Leibniz, and Kant.

Seventh, I want to acknowledge my debt and gratitude to those kind souls who read parts or all of the manuscript for this book and who have offered helpful corrections, improvements, and suggestions: Luther S. Luedtke, Walter K. Stewart, Nathan L. Tierney, Carlyle A. Smith, Richard Cole, Dale Johnson, Peter Hanns Reill, Eric W. Gritsch, Heiko A. Oberman, Richard W. Solberg, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Robert Guy Erwin, James J. Sheehan, and Thomas A. Brady, Jr. Their kindness, however, should not be construed to mean agreement either in general or in many particulars.

Finally, and most of all, I want to thank my wife Sharon Faye Ronning Smith not only for reading the various versions of this manuscript but also for all the advice, helpful criticisms, and unflagging support that she has provided for all my academic endeavors.

1. Ranke, Erwiderung auf Heinrich Leo’s Angriff, 664–65. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German sources are my own.

abbreviations

BC The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical

Lutheran Church (Translated by Arand et al., 2000).

BC-T The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical

Lutheran Church (Translated by Tappert, 1959).

CSM 1 Discourse on the Method, in The Philosophical Writings of

Descartes, 2 vols. (Translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and

Murdoch)

Herder, SW Herder, Johann Gottfried. Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by

Bernhard Suphan. 33 vols. Berlin, Weidmann, 1877–1913.

LW Luther’s Works

WA Dr. Martin Luthers Werke. Kristische Gesamtausgabe

[Schriften], Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1993.

Werke 1 Herder, Johann Gottfried. Frühe Schriften 1764–1772 (1985).

one

A Typology of Classical and Christian Historiography

The description of the individual psycho-physical life-unit [Lebenseinheit] is biography. . . . The progress and destiny of the human will is here apprehended in its dignity as an end in itself. The biographer should intuit people sub specie aeterni, as he feels himself in those moments when everything standing between him and divinity seems a superficial diversion and when he feels himself to be as close to the starry heavens as to any part of the earth. Thus biography represents the most fundamental fact clearly, fully, and in its reality.

¹

—Wilhelm Dilthey

With analogies one must compare entire stages of development and not just momentary, contemporary conditions.

²

—Otto Hintze

History can have as its possible object everything dealing with human culture in relation to a perception of time. The concept of the individual totality is, of course, crucial to determining an object of historical study; and I would suggest that the only decisive criterion is its comprehensibility as a life-unit [Lebenseinheit]. The defining of objects of historical study is, in my opinion, an act of intuitive, not rational, thought. The historian’s thinking here is not logical but analogical. The concept of the individual totality underlies this analogical thinking.

³

—Otto Hintze

the problem

In 1927, Otto Hintze published an article in the Historische Zeitschrift called Troeltsch and the Problems of Historicism: Critical Studies, an essay that was one of the most significant contributions to the idea of history by a professional historian during the twentieth century. Four of Hintze’s contributions in this essay, apparent in the quotation cited directly above, were (1) his distinction between actual and possible objects of history, (2) his very inclusive and important statement concerning the possible object of history, (3) his assertion that historical thinking is basically analogical, and (4) his declaration that the concept of the individual totality underlies this analogical thinking. Since each of these ideas was conceived by the most broadly trained, Aristotelian (form-thinking), and Kantian (analytical) mind among professional historians in Germany in the first third of the twentieth century, it is strange that these ideas have not received greater attention by scholars in or outside of Germany.

If one believes, however, that each of these ideas is helpful for understanding the nature of modern historical thought, what difference could this make in one’s understanding of the idea of history from the time of Herodotus? This is the first major aspect of the problem behind this chapter, and this book as a whole.

One of the ways in which Otto Hintze’s third ideal type, a model of the modern Western state,⁴ was the most advanced methodologically was that here he presented—as succinctly as he could—four characteristics that together composed the type.⁵ One of the most useful parts of R. G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History is the section where he presented, as succinctly as he could, four characteristics of Christian historiography.

As a result of many years of using (1) Hintze’s three ideal types to teach Western institutional development in the context of a world-civilizations course and in various courses in modern European history, and (2) his definition and view of historicism to teach the idea of history within a year-long interdisciplinary, and great-books course dealing with Western history, literature, philosophy, and religion,⁶ five basic questions arose in my mind: (1) Could one apply Hintze’s ideal-type methodology to the study of Western historiography? (2) Could one use his third ideal type as the chief model in this endeavor? (3) Could one use Collingwood’s four characteristics of Christian historiography as one of the three main types, which together would constitute a complete typology of Western historical thought? (4) Could one develop four basic and matching characteristics to form a model of classical historiography of Greece and Rome and a model of modern historiography? And, most of all, (5) could the three models and the typology of Western historical thought that I developed and used for many years in my classes be useful for other teachers and for the discipline as a whole?⁷ These five questions together form the second main aspect of the problem behind this chapter, and together they are a major aspect of this historical inquiry as a whole.

classical historiography of greece and rome

In the opening paragraph of the essay Wesen und Wandlung des modernen Staats or The Nature and Transformation of the Modern State (1931), Otto Hintze suggested that when an historian creates a pictorial conception or an "intuitive [anschauliche] abstraction" known as an ideal type, he singles out certain basic characteristics and presents them in as pure a form as possible. These characteristics are then formed into a whole that can be used to orient oneself in the confusing abundance of historical phenomena.

⁸

When one looks at the development of Western historiography since the time of Herodotus, the father of history, one can see three main stages of development, three main periods for the idea of history, and three main types of historical writing: (1) classical historiography of ancient Greece and Rome, (2) Christian historiography from the time of St. Augustine to the Enlightenment and the time and work of Voltaire, and (3) modern professional historiography since the time of the founding of the University of Berlin (1810) and the work of Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831) and Leopold von Ranke. The chief purpose behind this chapter, however, is to present a sketch of the idea of history in the West from the time of Herodotus to the time of Voltaire through two historical ideal types or models: a model of classical historiography of Greece and Rome, and a model of Christian historiography to the Enlightenment.

As an intuitive abstraction, as a historical ideal type or model, and as a stage in the development of Western historical thought, Greco-Roman historiography was

1. epic because wars and politics were the proper subject of this new kind of prose epic, and because Greek and Roman historians emphasized the greatness of events and heroes rather than their individuality and uniqueness;

2. humanistic because Herodotus created a way of seeing and presenting human events juxtaposed in time in a way that made sense, and because in contrast to the mythopoeic literature prior to Herodotus and in contrast to the theocentric historiography of the Christian epoch, Greek and Roman historians were concerned not with the actions of gods and humans but with what men have done;

3. rational because the word historia was a Greek word that meant research, inquiry, investigation, or establishing the truth, and because the main concern of Greek and Roman historians was to investigate the meaning and coherence of events in terms of the purposeful action of statesmen, military leaders, and other influential men;

4. didactic because after Thucydides, history came to be regarded as a branch of rhetoric and as an art that provided good examples to follow and bad examples to avoid; and because it was taught in schools only for the purpose of providing rhetorical examples⁹ and not for the purpose of showing how things came to be.

For the ancient Greeks, Homer was the poet par excellence, and the Iliad and Odyssey were their history. The mythopoios or poet was literally a mythmaker, and originally a myth was a story with no implication as to its veracity or probability. For the ancient Greeks, the poet was the historian, the philosopher, and the educator; for the poet knew, the poet possessed wisdom (sophia), and the poet was the teacher.

¹⁰

In the sixth century BCE, however, the poet’s exclusive position as guardian of truth, knowledge, and wisdom was challenged by the early Greek philosophers, who sought to understand and to explain how everything in this orderly world or cosmos was derived from certain basic or eternal substances. Beside the wisdom of Homer and the poets, these philosophers or lovers of wisdom discovered a new kind of wisdom no longer dependent upon divine revelation or poetic charm. Truth was now something to be determined by rational processes of thought, for they had discovered the abstract idea of truth,¹¹ or what some philosophy teachers love to call Truth with a capital T. The idea of abstract truth was a necessary preliminary to the idea of historical truth established by Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth century BCE.

¹²

When Herodotus (ca. 495–425 BCE¹³) wrote the story of the Persian invasions of Greece, he created a new kind of epic, a prose epic. Both his purpose and his language were epic, for he published this work in the hope of preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, in order to prevent the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory, and also to put on record what were their grounds of feud.

¹⁴

Most significantly, however, he began with the words, These are the histories of Herodotus, which simply meant the researches or inquiries of Herodotus since that is what the word historia meant. The use of this word, its implications, and its connection with this first great artistic work of Greek prose¹⁵ mark the beginning of history, for history is first and foremost a form of inquiry concerned not with what gods and humans have done, but—in the words of Herodotus—what men have done.¹⁶ It is interest­ing to note that the stem of the word historia was the same as for to see, for as Charles Rowan Beye has pointed out, Herodotus deserves the title Father of History because he created a way of seeing and presenting human events juxtaposed in time in a manner that makes sense.

¹⁷

Although Herodotus and Thucydides sought to emulate Homer when they created this new kind of epic, Greek and Roman historians clearly differentiated between myth and history. Thucydides (471?–400? BCE) distrusted the accounts of poets and chroniclers because their accounts could not be tested since most of the facts, owing to the lapse of time, have been mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology (1:21).¹⁸ He criticized earlier writers for including too many entertaining stories in their work and as too given to mythoi or to accepting and including oracles, omens, and other implausible and unverifiable details.¹⁹ For Thucydides, a myth was a story that was improbable because it could not be supported on the basis of rational thought and critical investigation of evidence.

When Thucydides began his inquiry into the great event of his life, the Peloponnesian War, he emphasized how he had described nothing but what he had either seen himself or learned from others by most careful and particular enquiry. He would be satisfied, he said, if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful (1:22).

Like a reporter today, Thucydides interviewed eyewitnesses to find out what happened by asking who, what, when, where, why, and how. Like a modern professional historian, he also used documents from the city of Athens and from other cities to establish the truth and chronology of what hap­pened.²⁰ Through his person­al experience as a general in the war on the side of Athens and as an outside observer after he was ostracized, he was better able to visualize, to reexperience, and to reenact the war in his own mind and to present it as a single whole and as a single event in a rigorous and sovereign way. While Herodotus was concerned about the accuracy of his recording of the stories that were told to him, which he wove into his narrative with great skill, Thucydides was more concerned about the accuracy and verifi­ability of his account of what happened. He insisted that his work was true because it was based strictly on the evidence.

Thus with Thucydides, one can see an emphasis on evi­dence, on the basic procedure of the historian to interpret the evidence, and the linking of the procedure of the historian with the object of the historian: to interpret the evidence in order to present a true picture of the events which have happened. Here we can see the historian’s ideal of truth, for historians are concerned with factual truth²¹ or with facts and events that can be established on the basis of rational and painstaking investigation of evidence existing here and now.

During the fourth century BCE, the word historia became the accepted name for the particular kind of inquiry and literary genre created by Herodotus. In his work called Poetics, Aristotle used the word history as the accepted name for a particular kind of inquiry with its own name when he claimed that poetics was more philosophical than history since its statements were more of a universal nature while history only dealt with the particular (1451b).

²²

In the beginning section of the first book of The Histories of Polybius, a Greek statesman (ca. 198–117 BCE) who was taken hostage to Rome after the defeat and destruction of the kingdom of Macedonia in 168 BCE, one can see how the Greeks viewed the particular form of inquiry called history in the second century BCE. Again and again, Polybius pointed out, his predecessors had claimed that the study of History is in the truest sense an education and a training for political life; and that the most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicis­sit­udes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.

²³

After sixteen years in Rome, Polybius returned to his homeland and wrote the story of how in a period of less than fifty-three years (220–168 BCE) almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of Rome. To make his subject more understandable and complete, however, he decided to extend his history to include both the first war between Rome and Carthage (264–241 BCE) and also the Third Punic War, with the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BCE. This extension of his history was also an extension of the idea of history in regard to time, for his inquiry now included five generations rather than the single generation of Thucydides.

²⁴

The main part of this marvelous and vast story of how Rome became a great world empire, however, was the time from the Second Punic War to the conquest of Macedonia in 168 BCE, for up to this time the world’s history had been, so to speak, a series of disconnected transactions, as widely separated in their origin and results as in their localities. But from this time forth History becomes a connected whole.

²⁵

Just as Polybius believed that the Romans had created a unified world with a unified history, so also he believed that in telling this story he had created a new kind of history: There is this analogy between the plan of my History and the marvelous spirit of the age with which I have to deal. Just as Fortune made almost all the affairs of the world incline in one direction, and forced them to converge upon one and the same point; so it is my task as an historian to put before my readers a compendious view of the part played by Fortune in bringing about the general catastrophe. It was this peculiarity which originally challenged my attention, and determined me on undertaking this work.

Combined with this, Polybius continued, was the fact that no writer of his time had undertaken a general history. Had anyone done so my ambition in this direction would have been much diminished. But, in point of fact, I notice that by far the greater number of historians concern themselves with isolated wars and the incidents that accompany them: while as to a general and comprehen­sive scheme of events, their date, origin, and catastrophe, no one as far as I know has undertaken to examine it.

²⁶

For Polybius, this new kind of general or universal history (historia katholike) was superior to the kind of episodical history practiced by most historians, because it was better suited to achieve the main object and the chief purposes of history:

For indeed some idea of a whole may be got from a part, but an accurate knowledge and clear comprehension cannot. Wherefore we must conclude that episodical history contributes exceedingly little to the familiar knowledge and secure grasp of universal history. While it is only by the combi­nation and comparison of the separate parts of the whole,—by observing their likeness and their difference,—that man can attain his object: can obtain a view at once clear and complete; and thus secure both the profit and the delight of history.

²⁷

In this passage Polybius clearly articulated and firmly established the Hellenistic view that history should be both useful and delightful, but more than other Greek historians he emphasized the practical nature of history.²⁸ His kind of history, he said, was pragmatic.

Like the term historia katholike, the term historia pragmatike is a basic one for the idea of history in the West. Usually modern professional historians have used the word pragmatic in the way Hintze did in his essay called Troeltsch and the Problems of Historicism. For Hintze, pragmatic history was synonymous with political history. The concern of pragmatism, he said, was to investigate the acts of statesmen and other influential individuals, for it saw the meaning and coherence of events primarily in terms of the purposeful actions of individuals.

²⁹

Most of all, however, Polybius stressed the usefulness of his history. It was difficult for him to believe that anyone could be so indifferent or idle as not to care or to know by what means, and under what polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered, or that anyone could be so completely absorbed in other subjects of contemplation or study, as to think any of them superior to the accurate understanding of an event for which the past affords no precedent.³⁰ Like most great historians, Polybius had a great story to tell, a story that was great because of its intrinsic importance for humanity.

By the year 200 BCE, the Romans had begun to write their own histories.³¹ When Titus Livy (ca. 59 BCE–17 CE) conceived the magnificent idea of a complete history of Rome from its beginning, the Romans acquired a splendid literary account of their history as a people or nation.³² Although both Polybius and Livy thought they were writing universal history, since to them Rome had become the civilized world, R. G. Collingwood’s distinction between their kind of oecumenical history and the new kind of universal history developed by Christian scholars—especially during the crises of the fourth and fifth centuries—is very helpful for understanding the story of the idea of history.

While classical historiography from Herodotus through Polybius was both epic and rational, it was also deeply humanistic. The origins and meanings of the words humanism and humanist in the West are associated with, and derived partly from, the Ciceronian ideal of humanitas.³³ For Cicero (106–43 BCE), the ideal education was one that would produce the ideal orator, a man of broad culture or humanitas. To Cicero, humanitas signified all that was worthy in man.

³⁴

In a book called De Oratore (a dialogue concerning the education of an orator, and one of the most influential books in the history of Western education), Cicero sought to combine Greek culture and Roman virtue, or the best of Greek and Roman educational ideals: (1) the orator as a lover of wisdom who combined training in rhetoric with all branches of learning, artes liberales or liberalis disciplina; and (2) the orator as a practical statesman who was trained especially in history, law, and philosophy.³⁵ All the teachings of Cicero in De Oratore is contained in a sentence from another of his writings: We are all called men, but only those of us are men who have been civilized by the studies proper to culture.

³⁶

For Cicero, history served a double purpose: to provide a storehouse of knowledge of rhetorical illustrations and to link us with the past.³⁷ By what other voice, too, than that of the orator is history, he asked, for is it not the evidence of time, the light of truth, the life of memory, the directness of life, the herald of antiquity, committed to immortality?³⁸ History was a necessary ingredient of any kind of education for Cicero, for to be ignorant of what happened before you were born, he insisted, is to live the life of the child forever.

³⁹

Cicero also established high standards for individuals who wrote history. "For who is ignorant that it is the first law in writing