Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

150 Scientism and Values
aspects of the past has constantly grown, and although the severest
methods of sifting and testing, comparing and combining have been
and are still being applied-although, in short, we historians have
done and are still doing our best-few of us will nowadays maintain
that the day is near when sentiment or egoism can be eliminated from
the interpretation or presentation of the past.
The provocative crudity with which Taine expressed himself in
these prefaces, and the glaring contradiction presented by the highly
sensitive and personal quality, even violent partisanship, of the books
they introduced to the public alienated many of his contemporaries.
There was particularly Sainte-Beuve, who in the heyday of philosophic
or systematized or symbolic history was in the habit of making comments
of astringent and wholesome skepticism, to the effect that the
individuality of the actor and the uniqueness of the event in history
should not be forgotten, that the observer should humbly remember
his human quality and not pretend to be in control of the fortuitous
and the unforeseeable.
Today, at any rate, most of us know that it is not so simple. Large
regions of history have no doubt proved suitable for methods of research
which may be called scientific. The collaboration of historical
scholars can yield valuable results. Yet, notwithstanding, or rather by
very reason of, our half-century more of experience, we know that
history will not so readily give up her secret at the bidding of the
magic word "science." We have grown somewhat wary of this scientific
terminology applied to history. The view of history as an organic
development has proved extraordinarily fertile; it is still helpful, but
it should not be thought that the word "organism" in its biological
sense can represent a historical reality. It is no more than a metaphor;
it is a token used for a working method. In Taine's own day, however,
the spirit animating professions of faith such as the ones quoted
exercised an influence not often leading to unconditional acceptance,
but so extensive as, to set a mark on the period, and this for the whole
of the Western world. And, as a matter of fact, that spirit has by no
means been cast out, nor has the mark been effaced.
"The spirit has not been cast out." It reigns supreme in the
Communist world. At the International Historical Congress, held
in Rome in 1955, there appeared a number of Russian historians,
and several of them read papers. Their leader, Sidorov, was proud