Note 853 — Chapter I · : THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL AND THE CONFLICT OF METHODS

History may, as a matter of fact, become explanatory, but only in a particular sense. In other words, although it cannot discover the general laws regulating phenomena, it may show what special circumstances (whose general laws are already supposed to be known) have given rise to some event equally specialised in character. But every honest historian has to admit that such explanations are definitely personal and subjective in character. For a recent examination of these ideas from the pen of a historian see the profound yet charming introduction contributed by Meyer to the second edition of his Geschichte des Alterthums. Cf. also Simiand, pp. 14-16.