Accordingly, the historians of the Enlightenment were compelled to find their principle of selection outside the limits of history itself. This principle was the supposed utility of history as the basis of an exact social science. As we have seen, this is the service which Hume regarded as the chief value of history. Knowing something of the general laws of human nature, we can understand to some extent the course of history. Reciprocally, the study of history brings to light general psychological laws on which political and social science, and in fact all the mental sciences, can be based. Historical situations constitute the experimental data from which moral philosophers make their generalizations. History is the means by which the short span of human experience is extended to include the accumulated experience of all ages. "If we consider the shortness of human life, and our limited knowledge, even of what passes in our own time, we must be sensible that we should be for ever children in understanding, were it not for this invention, which extends our experience to all past ages, and to the most distant nations; making them contribute as much to our improvement in wisdom as if they had actually lain under our observation. A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century."[1]
This application of history to political and social problems was very general among Hume's contemporaries. It is one aspect of the doctrine, so characteristic of the time, that "The proper study of mankind is man." As we have pointed out in Hume's case, it failed to reach, by reason of its abstractness, what we should call the essentially historical point of view. Nevertheless, it introduced a conception which all history since has been glad to retain. This was the notion that the important problem for history is not merely to portray battles and narrate the deeds of kings and courts, but is rather to study the progress of manners and customs. Culture, learning, and enlightenment were the special interest, even the passion, of the time, and Kulturgeschichte is its peculiar product. The progress which this view
- ↑ "Of the Study of History," Vol. IV, p. 390.
