Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

148 Scientism and Values
truth in an almost untraceable manner, which does not necessarily
turn it into falsehood, but which nevertheless transforms it into something
different from the simple truth-I mean the opinion, or the
sentiment, or the philosophy of life, of the narrator; or in other words,
the personality of the historian.
No certainty, no finality. "History," so I put it in my Napoleon
For and Against)4 "is an argument without end." The discussion
is not fruitless, far from it. But every conclusion reached, helpful
and satisfying as it may be, and seemingly well established, will
lead to further questioning, which will reveal in it weak spots or
unsuspected implications, and at any rate the debate will continue.
The ambitious systems, the philosophies of history as they used
to be called, in which the whole of mankind's historic life was surveyed
and the stages, of development categorically indexed, do not
really belong to this debate. They were derived by their authors
from other sources than the patient and devoted contemplation of
the past, sources which promised certainty. 81. Augustine was inspired
by the revelations and the prophecies of Holy Writ. In the
eighteenth century the French philosophers deified Reason, but
in their visions the past was fashioned so as to appear the predestined
preparation of their earthly "heavenly city." 5 Hegel was in
a way no more than a secularized St. Augustine. His conception of
history, too, is of a purposeful development, its motive force, instead
of the God of the Christians, being the Absolute, realizing
itself. Hegel's influence was profound, and he taught generations
of historians-especially, but by no means solely, in Germany-to
present historical events as the inevitable and predetermined working
out of ideas or currents governing the epochs. And then, in the
nineteenth century, this conception of history, which had at first,
in spite of its rationalist appearance, thrived on the support of the
spirit of romanticism, entered into a very different, but perhaps
even more powerful, alliance with science.
This was largely the doing of Comte. I shall here insert a few
comments from Use and Abuse of History: 6
Comte, the father of positivism, had his own system of historical
development, in so many stages, a system founded more exclusively