Wesleyan University

Narration and Structure in Late Eighteenth-Century Historical Thought

Author(s): Peter Hanns Reill
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Oct., 1986), pp. 286-298
Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505192 .
Accessed: 30/03/2011 09:41
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Blackwell Publishing and Wesleyan University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to History and Theory.

http://www.jstor.org

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

HISTORICAL THOUGHT*

PETER HANNS REILL

In his Principles of Moral and Political Science, published in 1792, Adam Ferguson described the material world as a system of "signs and expressions"created
by God, but calling for human interpretation.
It is a magnificentbut regulardiscourse,composedof partsand subdivisions,proceeding,
in the originalor creativemind, from generalsto particulars;but, in the mereobserver,
to be tracedby a laboriousinductionfromthe indefinitevarietyof particulars,to some
notion of the generalmold of forms in which they are cast.1
Included in this vast semiotic field were the past actions and creations of mankind, which, Ferguson believed, had to be deciphered if understanding of the
human condition weredesired. It was the historian'stask to order and make sense
of these signs, to place them within a system of meaning, and to evolve an adequate way of presenting these hard-won insights. In late eighteenth-century language this call clearly implied that history was to be made into a scientific discipline, capable of aspiring to the same authority as that enjoyed by the leading
sciences of the time. To systematize was to scientize, or to quote Ferguson again,
"the love of science and the love of system are the same."2
Though the use of the term semiotics to characterizethe science of deciphering
sign systems was just becoming fashionable, Ferguson'sproject expressed a dominant concern of his age.3 In many ways its strong naturalistic assumptions seem
to confirm the standardportrayalof Enlightened historiography-that it was unwilling or incapable of distinguishing between history and the natural sciences
and hence was "dominated by a concept of rationalism derived from the (Newtonian) physical sciences."' But the admonition to decode the discourse of nature,
* This article, in a slightly different form, will appear in History of Historiography [Storia delta
Storiografia] 10, forthcoming, as part of a series on "Narrative History and Structural History."
1. Adam Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1792), I, 275.
2. Ibid., I, 278.
3. The term semiotics was originally a medical term designating the science of recognizing illnesses from outward signs. During the late eighteenth century it was expanded, first to geology and
then to history. Herder makes the last stage clear: "Wenn einst die Semiotik der Seele studiert wird
wie die Semiotik des Korpers, wird man in allen Krankheiten derselben ihre so eigne geistige Natur
erkennen, dass die Schlisse der Materialisten wie Nebel vor der Sonne verschwinden werden."Ideen
zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Berlin and Weimar, 1985), I, Book 5, Part 4, 184.
4. Hayden White, Metahistory (Baltimore, 1973), 65.

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE

287

to induce sets of order "from the infinite variety of particulars" was impelled
by a new scientific mentality that altered radically the early eighteenth-century
Newtonian model of science and nature that has so often been assumed to have
dominated the whole Enlightenment. This new scientific vision induced late
eighteenth-century thinkers to reconsider consciously the form, function, and
meaning of history, which led to a thoroughgoing revision of traditional historical understanding.Centralto this revision was the problem of narrativeand structural history. In its broadest context, when late eighteenth-century thinkers confronted this problem they were forced to deal with the questions of how history
was to be-ordered,how it should be represented,and what forms of understanding
it conveyed.
Before we turn to how late eighteenth-century thinkers grappled with these
questions, it is necessary to understand the new scientific context in which the
call to synthesize history was made. The most basic feature of this new scientific
sensibility was its dissatisfaction with mechanistic and mathematical models of
reasoning and demonstration, a feeling that became evident from mid-century
on.5 Rather than relying upon an idea of nature increasingly considered "dead,"
"static,"and demeaning to the ideal of purposeful activity, thinkers in all disciplines were attempting to construct a new order of things in which dynamic
concepts of order replaced static ones and in which reality became defined in
terms of complex interconnections. One of the most important events that both

5. The widespread dissatisfaction with mechanical natural philosophy is now being recognized.
For an excellent analysis of the changes in the life sciences in France during the eighteenth century,
see Jacques Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensee francaise du XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1971).
Colin Kiernan has argued in a similar vein, asserting that "the thought of the Enlightenment is here
seen as a debate between proponents of the physical and of the life sciences, where, as the century
advanced, victory passed to the latter."The Enlightenmentand Science in Eighteenth-CenturyFrance:
Studies on Voltaireand the Eighteenth Century, ed. Theodore Besterman (Oxfordshire, 1973), LIX,
104. Sergio Moravia has written an outstanding article discussing the change in concepts of human
nature,"FromHomme Machine to Homme Sensible: Changing Eighteenth-CenturyModels of Man's
Image,"Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978).Fergusonhimself was very familiarwith the scientific
developments of his time. He was an avid reader of Buffon and the life scientists, and he was the
cousin and biographer of one of the leading Scottish scientific critics of mechanism, William Cullen.
For an excellent discussion of Cullen's science see Arthur L. Donovan, "William Cullen and the
Research Tradition of Eighteenth-Century Scottish Chemistry," in The Origins and Nature of the
Scottish Enlightenment, ed. R. H. Campbell and Andrew S. Skinner (Edinburgh, 1982). If Ferguson's
attempt to join history and the new science is at all typical for the Scottish Enlightenment -and
I think it may be - then a necessary revision of the Scottish Enlightenment must be undertaken,
for it usually is considered as the clearest example for the transposition of mechanical natural philosophy to the realms of history and economics. The critique of mechanism had strong political
overtones which must be investigated. Ferguson makes this clear. Writing in 1767 he asserts: "Our
notion of order in civil society is frequently false: it is taken from the analogy of subjects inanimate
and dead; we consider commotion and action as contrary to its nature; we think it consistent only
with obedience, secrecy, and the silent passing of affairs through the hands of a few. The good order
of stones in a wall, is their being properly fixed in the places for which they are hewn; were they
to stir the building must fall: but the order of men in society, is their being placed where they are
properly qualified to act. The first is a fabric made of dead and inanimate parts, the second is made
of living and active members. When we seek in society for the order of mere inaction and tranquility,
we forget the nature of our subject, and find the order of slaves, not of free men." An Essay on
the History of Civil Society, ed. Duncan Forbes (Edinburgh, 1966), 268-269.

288

PETER HANNS REILL

signalled and influenced this mid-century shift in scientific sensibilities was the
publication of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle in 1749. The work self-consciously
proclaimed a new conception of science and method that took direct aim at the
dominant approaches of the early eighteenth century; it also bristled with bold
and novel interpretationsof natureformulatedin a clear and elegant prose. Among
the many themes that were to influence writers in other disciplines, two were of
decisive importance, especially as developed by other life scientists.6 The first
dealt with questions of scientific method and the definition of scientific system,
the second with change overtime, primarilywith referenceto generation,reproduction, and growth.
Perhaps the most obvious and easily accessible element in Buffon's thinking
was his proclamation in the introductory chapter of the Histoire Naturelle of
a new concept of scientific method. Here he attacked the two dominant modes
of early eighteenth-centuryscientific procedure,simple empiricism and axiomatic
reasoning. He made short work of the former, mocking its seeming mindlessness
in a manner reminiscent of Voltaire or Bolingbroke. His critique of the axiomatic method was more important, for it questioned long held assumptions about
what made science a science. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, mathematics was considered the ideal symbolic language of science. The
closer an explanation came to a mathematical demonstration, the better, the more
"evident"the explanation. Mechanical natural philosophy was founded upon the
imperativeto transform contingent knowledge into coherent truth, to reduce the
manifold appearances of nature to simple principles expressible in quantifiable
terms. As long as this ideal remained dominant, historical knowledge was assigned a lowly position in the hierarchyof knowledge; it was merely knowledge
of things that have occurred, that is, of facts.7 Buffon and others like him reversed
this argument.They distinguishedbetween real physicaltruths and abstracttruths.
Abstract truths were considered products of pure human invention; mathematical and axiomatic proofs were assigned to this category. They were correct but
sterile, incapable of saying anything other than that with which they began. They
were, to use Ferguson's description, "a species of disguised tautology, in which
a subject repeated in the form of a predicate is affirmed to itself."8 In the place
of axiomatic method and proof, Buffon proposed an alternative approach and
a differentscientific language. Science was the study of physical truths which have
actually occurred; scientific explanation was historical in form, its mode of
representation being description.
But what was one to describe?Certainly not the isolated individual occurrence.
That was the procedure of simple empiricism, of the compilers, which Buffon
and his contemporaries so thoroughly despised. Events had to be placed within
a system and only meaningful events could be chosen. For Buffon and those
6. The term "life sciences" is used to designate those disciplines treating living or "organized"
matter that were later combined under the general heading of biology.
7. This is the definition Christian Wolff gives of history in Gesammelte WerkeI. Abt., Deutsche
Schriften, I, 115.
8. Ferguson, Principles, I, 79.

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE

289

sharing his view, the system was to be a "natural"one, that is, one not founded
upon arbitrarilychosen categories immediately apparentto view. Again, this proposal was a direct denial of previously accepted concepts of systematic organization. Early eighteenth-century mechanical philosophy had assumed that all
bodies - inert and living - were aggregates of simple identical building blocks
of matter. In theory, these bodies could be separated mechanically, the individual
particles isolated, and then reconstructed synthetically. Cause and effect was the
physical action and reaction of these individual bodies, typically conceived in
terms of transferred motion. A system was a logical ordering of independent
variables whose causal connections were transparent and considered constitutive for the aggregateunder investigation. Succession and linearity were the basic
ordering principles, strict chronology a descriptive imperative for causal explanation. Buffon and the leading life scientists of the late Enlightenment advanced
a different idea of system for characterizing living bodies. Instead of being aggregates, they were compounds in which all elements were symbiotically connected. It would be impossible to isolate or subtract a single element from the
whole without changing substantially the relations between the parts. Reality
was conceived as a set of complex relations or rapports existing between mutually interdependent parts, a type of combination described by the French physiologist Barthez as a synergy.9Because of the almost infinite possibilities of combination and interaction, life could not be encompassed under simple, uniform
categories. It consisted of individual centers of energy and activity, each demonstrating its own individuality. Nature was unity in multiplicity. The apprehension of this unity in multiplicity required a form of understanding higher than
pure rational analysis. Since relations of identity were not to be found in the
real world, one could only discover similarities and analogies. The only way this
could be accomplished was through comparative analysis. Comparative analysis
became the basic methodological procedureof the new life sciences in which function replacedform and outwardcharacteristicswereseen increasinglyas secondary
phenomena. It should be obvious that this new conception of systematic conjunction altered the idea of causality radically. It became impossible to designate
one thing as cause and the other as effect, for each element within an "organized"
body was both cause and effect of the other."0Mere mechanical succession no
longer served as the way to apprehend causal connections.
This concept of system appeared adequate to apprehend an organic entity at
any given moment. However, most late eighteenth-century thinkers were convinced that in what they called the "living order of nature" nothing stood still;
every living part of nature was continually in movement and this movement was
not haphazard.Here they adopted the newly proposed theory of epigenesis, which
described generation and growth as a series of individual step-like transforma9. Paul-Joseph Barthez, Nouveaux e'1Mments
de la science de rhomme, 2 vols. (Montpellier, 1778),
I, 146.
10. See, for example, Moses Mendelssohn, Ueber die Empfindung (Berlin, 1755), 127: "dass von
allen Begebenheiten in der organischen Natur, eine jede sowohl die Ursache als die Wirkung einer
andern seyn konnte."

290

PETER HANNS REILL

tions, where each step was connected to the earlier one, but also produced something new. Further, it was assumed that the movement of organized matter was
not externally induced. Rather, organized matter had its own principle of selfmovement, which many thinkers ascribed to the existence of internal powers and
forces residingwithin matter itself. The existence of these "active,"internal powers
along with other energies or "occult forces" such as "gravitation, magnetism,
or electricity,"which seemingly "exist without dimension, solidity, or impenetrability" yet are capable of penetrating "space however occupied by the most solid
bodies" became a crucial doctrine that differentiatedthe new scientific sensibility
form earlier mechanism." In Germany this position was developed most forcefully by Johann Blumenbach, one of the most influential physiologists of his
time. According to him, organic life was governed by a combination of general
and specific vital energies. Among the general forces he postulated the existence
of a formative drive, the Bildungstrieb, that guided the formation of an organism
and then operated to maintain that form, compensating for any damage done
to the organism by either replacing the parts or by refining other parts to fulfill
the function of the lost ones.'2 Clearly, for Blumenbach, as well as for thinkers
such as Ferguson, Robertson, Millar, Herder, Schldzer, Gatterer, and Kant, internal powers wereteleological in nature; each system had its own inherent dynamism which also determined its character and which was necessary to comprehend if one wished to understand its nature.
No single stage in this development was more privileged than another, none
more revealing of its "true"essence. "By parity of reason," Ferguson states, "the
natural state of a living creature includes all its known varieties, from the embryo and the foetus to the breathinganimal, the adolescent and the adult, through
which life in all its variations is known to pass."'3 Thus, the natural historian
was faced with two tasks, to comprehend the nature of a given organism at a
specific time and to understand its whole history. Stasis and dynamism formed
a dialectical pairing guiding late eighteenth-century attempts to decipher the discourse of nature. Once again Ferguson sums up this attitude in the following
description of this tension.
Parts that constitute the system of nature, like the stones of an arch, support and are
supported; but their beauty is not of the quiescent kind. The principles of agitation and
life combine their effects in constituting an order of things, which is at once fleeting and
permanent. The powers of vegetation and animal life come in aid of mechanical principles; the whole is alive and in action: the scene is perpetually changing; but in its changes,
exhibits an order more striking than could be made to arise from the mere position or
description of any forms entirely at rest.14

If we assume, as Reinhart Koselleck argues, that narration implies a telos and

that it inevitably employs a time structure in its emplotment, then it should be

11. Ferguson,Principles,I, 66.

12. JohannFriedrichBlumenbach,Ueberden Bildungstrieb,2d ed. (Gottingen,1789).
13. Ferguson,Principles,I, 192.
14. Ibid., I, 174.

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE

291

clear that the dual tasks of analyzing structural connections and change over
time, when translated to history, would elevate the question of narration and
structureto a position of centraltheoreticalconcern in late Enlightenmenthistoriography.This translation was certainly made. Thinkers of the late eighteenth century usually assumed a close correlation between history and natural history,
especially when nature was imbued with active, goal-directed powers. This correlation was clearly demonstrated by all of those who, like Millar, Robertson, and
Ferguson, sought to write a natural history of society. Herder's famous statement "The whole of human history is a natural history of human forces, deeds,
and drives located in space and time" makes this evident."5To show the degree
to which these concerns formed a conscious part of historical reflection, I have
decided to concentrateupon the work of two representativefiguresof the German
Enlightenment, August Ludwig Schlozer and Johann Christoph Gatterer.
Though often opponents, Schlozer and Gatterershared similar concerns. They
were committed to reforming the study of history and especially universal history by excising the mass of what they considered the irrelevant material it
presented, and by bringing some order into the aggregate of national histories
that passed for universal history.16This reformation meant, for both, making
history into a scientific discipline, which called for treating it systematically.Thus,
Gatterer argued that the historian's first task was to create a "system of events"
in which noteworthy events that were related to one another were not separated
in the historical narrative.17Schlozer concurred, and both attacked the usual
manner in which historical material was organized and portrayed- either in a
strict chronological order listing disparateevents or by putting them into artificial
categories. Such procedures were arbitrary, mechanical, and lifeless; they produced "aggregates"which failed to present a "living idea of the whole." What
was needed was a vision that encompassed the whole: "this powerful vision transforms the aggregate into a system, it brings all the states of the earth back into
a unity of human history, and evaluates peoples only by their relationships to
the great revolutions of the world."18The goal was to establish a "Realzusammenhang," not merely a chronological connection, that would make clear the
"natural, immediate, and obvious connection of those events that pertain to a
single theme and which are related to each other in causal connections.'"
Since events must be related to specifically chosen themes, it is obvious that
Schlozer and Gatterer assumed that differenttypes of systems were possible and

15. Herder,"Die ganze Menschheitsgeschichteist eine NaturgeschichtemenschlicherKrafte, Handlungen und Triebe nach Ort und Zeit," Ideen, I, 152.
16. The most famous of these was the collection of national histories published in England and
usually known as the English WorldHistory. It was translated in Germany under the editorship of
Sigmund Jacob Baumgarten. In the 1760s August Ludwig Schlozer and Johann Gatterer sought
to revise and expand it, publishing seven more volumes.
17. Johann Christoph Gatterer, "Vom historischen Plan," in Allgemeine historische Bibliothek,
12 vols. (Gottingen, 1767-1771), I, 79-80.
18. August Ludwig Schlozer, VorstellungseinerUniversalHistorie, 2 vols. (Gottingen, 1772), I, 19.
19. Ibid., I, 46.

292

PETER HANNS REILL

necessary, which were determined by the investigator's own interests. Schlbzer

and Gatterer envisioned the existence of a hierarchy of causal systems, which
though influencing one another had their own unique characteristics as well as
their own historical rhythms.Establishing such systems avoided the relianceupon
simple mechanical models that emphasized contingency and succession. In history the analogue to mechanical explanation (usually based upon the model of
transferred motion) was the strict chronological ordering of successive events
in which the causal moment was located in the immediately precedingevent. Seriality was elevated to a central role in historical discourse, often leading to historical explanations in which great events were seen to result from chance, from
individual intention, or from seemingly inconsequential events. The new concept of order denied simple linearity. Events of one order (for example, world
historical events) could not be explained adequately by reference to events of
a differentorder (such as individual actions or accidents), no matter how closely
they were related on a simple linear time scale. As a result, history was now conceived as a complex set of interconnecting systems, analogous to the various
systems that comprised an organic entity. The historian's task was to apprehend
each system's uniqueness and to relate that system to others. "Every particular
history [Spezialgeschichte] appearsin a differentlight if it is combined with others
that it either touches or with which it is immediately connected."20This project
was given the name "pragmatic history," which in the technical language of the
time meant a critical-analytical study that uncovered causal connections. The
differencebetween this and earlier historical explanation was that the causal elements themselves were seen as changing over time. Pragmatic history was genetic
history, modeled after the concept of epigenesis. It traced the metamorphoses
and revolutions of society and was informed by the idea of autonomous historical development. Schlozer goes so far as to equate an historical explanation with
a genetic description.21The ideal of pragmatic history was described by Gatterer:
The highest degree of pragmatism in history would be the representation of the universal
connection of the things in the world (nexus rerum universalis). For no occurrence in
the world is, so to say, insulated. All things are joined to one another, cause one another,
generate one another; they are caused and generated, cause and generate, and lead to further causes and creations. The occurrences of the elevated and the lowly, of individual
humans and all together, of private life and the great world, of even dumb animals, lifeless creations, and human beings, are combined and entangled.22

Obviously, no mortal could achieve this goal and certainly historians like
Schlozer and Gatterer could in no way even approach it. But they, along with
a host of others, did alter the way in which historical narrative was to be constructed. They successfully displaced the subject of historical representation.
Scene, action, and actor changed, though some of the traditional models of nar-

20. Ibid., I, 43.

21. Schlozer, Allgemeine nordische Geschichte (Halle, 1771), 118. Vorstellung, II, 358.
22. Gatterer, "Vom historischen Plan," 85-86.

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE

293

rative were still employed. Schlozer's work illustrates three such displacements
that were common for leading historians of the late Enlightenment.
The first appeared in a long response Schlozer wrote to a critique Herder had
made of a piece of Schldzer's on universal history. In the response Schlozer expanded the point Gatterer had made about universal interconnection.
All peoples of the world have always been connected with one another, though in most
cases very indirectly.... The universal historian does not seek, as had previously been
done, for these connections along highways, where armies and conquerors have marched
to the beat of the drum, but ratheralong byways,where merchants, apostles, and travellers
quietly wandered.23

Here the subject of narration dealt with the unnoticed makers of history, the
scene took place in those areas of life ignored by earlierchroniclersand historians,
and the action was that of effecting "silent revolutions." This vision led Schlozer
to call for the study of human activity that had not been recognizedas noteworthy
[merkwurdig]:when, how, and why was the potato adopted, what effect did the
introduction of tobacco have in the villages, what importance did the invention
of the astrolabe, the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping, and the use of
gunpowder have upon the transformation of society?
The second displacement dealt less with people than with specific human activities that had their own internal dynamics. This was best developed in one
of Schldzer's works, the Nordische Geschichte. It was his contribution to the
rewriting of the English WorldHistory, which had been the standard collection
of individual histories that had passed as universal history. The object of study
was the vast area comprising the European north and Russia. His self-appointed
goal was to make some sense of the interconnection of the various ethnic groups
that had inhabited the area. He sought to classify these people along "natural"
and "genetic" lines. He chose language as the medium by which this could be
achieved. Schldzer proposed a theory of language which assumed that all languages, though influenced by the context in which they were spoken, developed
according to analogically similar patterns. This was an expansion and refinement
upon the work of his mentor and friend Johann David Michaelis. Both assumed
that languages could be placed within larger families of language in a way analogous to which individuals are considered members of a species. The procedure
of creating such a natural systematization required an intimate knowledge of
each individual language and the ability to induce the general characteristics of
the group without denying the specific individuality of each language. The dynamics of change could be apprehended by comparing the changes in one group
with those of others. Hence, single words no longer formed the proof for language relations, as had been the case for earlier etymologists, who had built fanciful historical explanations upon the chance similarity of a few words in different
languages. Structureand patterns of change became central and change was seen
as being propelled by internal forces similar to Blumenbach'sBildungstrieb. Here
23. Schlozer, Vorstellung, II, 273.

294

PETER HANNS REILL

the subject of narrative was the "progressive"development of languages themselves, for Schlozer agreed totally with Ferguson that "living languages, if they
do not improve, are disposed to decline, and are not secure from change, even
by the written monuments, which preserve to succeeding ages the records or
productions of those who precededthem."24The scene of action took place within
the language grouping and the action was that of internal powers shaping external form. In this displacement languages themselves were treated as though
they were "organized bodies."25
The third type of displacement is, for us, the most familiar. Hypostatized society became the subject of narration. Unlike the first displacement where certain groups were privileged as capable of influencing positive change (they functioned as active powers) and in the second where the analogy of organized matter
was applied to a specific type of human activity, here the "nation" becomes the
fundamental organized body, imbued with its own attendant character or spirit.
In his Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenburgen, Schlozer chose to show how
the German colonists who settled in Siebenburgen were able to create a society
in which "freedomand property"wereensured and German culture and language
preserved. A secondary motive was to demonstrate how these peaceful, nonconquering Germans had had a civilizing effect upon neighboring peoples, especially the Hungarians. Schlozer employed themes evident in the first two
displacements - his concern for peaceful change, his disdain for conquerors, and
his belief in the centrality of language and culture in its broadest sense - and
intensified them by associating them with a larger cultural entity. The scene of
his story comprised the whole area that today would include Hungary, Rumania,
and part of the Soviet Union. The type of action was twofold. With respect to
the Germans, it was a story of the development of the better parts of an already
established culture. It portrayedBildung taking place under favorableconditions.
With respect to the Hungarians, who today "exist as an independent, powerful,
and honorable people," it was the story of their becoming civilized, which for
Schlozer seemed to mean becoming europeanized, through their peaceful interaction with the Germans.26 In both cases, the analogy between individual qualities and nations was clearly drawn. A nation like a person has the ability either
to advance or deteriorate.27The environment and the relations in which an entity
is placed determines which of these tendencies prevails. "A person is by nature
nothing and can become everything through conjunctions. Indeterminability

24. Ferguson, Principles, I, 45.

25. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who proposed a similar view of language, considered Schlozer's Allgemeine nordische Geschichte a classic work and compared Schlozer's achievements in linguistics
to those of Leibniz: "Er hat wohl uberhaupt sei Leibniz zuerst wieder unter uns den wahren Begriff
dieser Wissenschaft aufgefasst. Erlas ein Collegium uber eine grosse, damals Erstaunen erregende
Anzahl von Sprachen, er zog im 31. Theil der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte die ersten Linien zu einer
sicheren Sprachkritik . . ." Wilhelm von Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1907), VI, 136.
26. Schlozer, Kritische Sammlungen zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenburgen, 3 vols. (Gottingen, 1795-1797), II, Vorbericht.
27. Schlozer, Vorstellung, II, 276-277.

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE

295

forms the second part of a person's being."28Schlozer'swhole story is constructed

along the model of the interaction among internal drives, the environment, and
neighboring peoples, for "no nation has ever elevated itself from its own original
state of existence [Urzustande] through its own power alone."29The image of
conjunction and interaction runs through all of Schlozer's work. It was accompanied by personal interjections demonstrating the process of critical reflection
and reconstruction. Schlozer did not hide behind his narrative-there is no omniscient observer. When narrative closure is made, we are always aware of who
was making it and why.
Though both Schlozer and Gatterer emphasized dynamic patterns of change,
concentrationupon them alone was not sufficientto meet completely the demands
of the new historical science envisioned by late Enlightenment historians. It was
widely recognizedthat in addition to constructinginterlockingdiachronicsystems,
the historian was also requiredto investigate the past from a perspective incompatible with causal analysis. Gatterer pointed to this paradox in one of his first
works.
We have two rules whose observances are of equal importance, but whose contents seem
to be so contradictory that one cannot do both at once. The first rule is this: one should
representthe important events of each people in chronological order to achieve an insight
into the process of change over time. The second is: one should explain the synchronic
connection of all states and empires existing at a specific period. According to the first
rule, one should take up the histories of the states one after the other in chronological
order. If one observes the second law, then the history of the development of the constitution of a single state will appear too disjointed and broken into too many disparateparts.30

The realization that it was necessary to "stop"time in order to perceive far-flung

synchronic relations - to consider history "horizontally"- corresponded to the
life scientist'sconcern with discoveringhidden "rapports"and constructinga "synergistic" system. It also was influenced by the writings of Montesquieu and by
ideas evolved in two related disciplines, the Wissenschaft der Alterthumer (Studium Antiquitaten) and what was referred to as "Statistics."
Montesquieu was especially important. Though sometimes characterized as
a reductionistor a mechanist, he presenteda vision of conjunction that integrated
single causal elements into a system. It was the total conjunction that formed
the spirit of nations at any given time. "Mankind is influenced by various causes:
by climate, by the religion, by the laws, by the maxims of government, by precedents, morals and customs; whence is formed a general spirit of nations.""3Here
Montesquieu sketched out a whole researchprogram for comprehending the intricate connections coexisting at a specific time. This program was enhanced by
parallel developments in the study of antiquities and statistics. The former was
28. Ibid., I, 6. "Der Mensch ist von Natur nichts, und kann durch Conjuncturen alles werden:
die Unbestimmtheit macht den zweiten Theil seines Wesen aus."
29. Schlkzer, Siebenburgern, II, 166.
30. Gatterer, Handbuch der Universalhistorie (Gottingen, 1761), 61.
31. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, transl. Thomas Nugent (New York, 1949), Book XIX, chap.
4, 293.

296

PETER HANNS REILL

already a well-established discipline that had been concerned primarily with the
investigation of nonliterary evidence. In the eighteenth century it received a new
impetus from developments in the study of numismatics, diplomatics, epigraphy,
and iconography as well as from new archeological discoveries. Its competence
had been expanded to include the whole fabric of material and spiritual culture.
Thus, Gatterer,who was an expert in many of these fields, defined the study of
antiquitiesas "thescience analyzing the religious, political, domestic, and learned
constitution of peoples and states in earliertimes."32By the 1760sthe "antiquarian
could venture into old and new fields with a confidence that his predecessors
lacked. He could turn himself into a historian or help historians to write histories of a new kind."33Statistics, a discipline established in Germany, at least, by
the seventeenth-century scholar Hermannn Conring and later developed by the
Gottingen professors Gottfried Achenwall and Schlozer, was first assigned the
task of describing the present condition of a state. Like the study of antiquity,
statistics ignored chronology in favor of a study of contemporary interconnection. Time was halted in order to gain a glimpse of the whole. Schlozer's definition of statistics makes this clear. "Statistics describes how a state as the state
in a specific epoch really is or was."34
This program, however, raised serious questions about the manner in which
the material so considered was to be presented.Synchronic representationdiffered
radicallyfrom diachronic narrationbecause it deliberatelyabolished the emphasis
upon causal connection in its desire to portraythe whole with its attendant spirit.
Ferguson made this differentiation clear in his 1769 definition of history. "Collections of facts constitute history, either descriptiveor narrative.Descriptive history is the detail of coexistent circumstances and qualities. Narrative history is
the detail of successive events."35For late eighteenth-centuryhistorians, the question of determiningthe epistemological status of description emergedas the basic
problem concerning the scientific status of historical representation. To many,
description necessarily involved the use of imagination, which automatically
brought history within the ambit of fiction. Ferguson again offers an example.
"Imagination is stating objects as present, and invested with all their qualities
and circumstances, real or fictitious. Objects imagined may be described, may
excite sentiment and passion, and are the sole object of desire and aversion."36
Hence, description necessarily spoke to the emotions as well as to reason; it dealt
with the area encompassed by rhetoric. What Hayden White described as the
paradox of narration was, for eighteenth-century thinkers, truer for structural
synchronic reconstruction. "It is here that [the] desire for the imaginary,the possible, must contest with the imperatives of the real, the actual."37
32. Gatterer, "Vom historischen Plan," 35.
33. Arnaldo Momigliano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," in Studies in Historiography
(London, 1966), 18.
34. Schlozer, Stats-Gelartheit nach ihren haupt Theilen, 2 vols. (Gottingen 1793, 1804), I, 94.
35. Ferguson, Institutes of Moral-Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1769), 60.
36. Ibid., 62.
37. Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,"in On Narrative,
ed W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago, 1980), 4.

NARRATION AND STRUCTURE

297

Twoyearsbefore Fergusonpublishedhis definitionof history,Gattereraddressed

this problem in an article entitled "Von der Evidenz in der Geschichtkunde."38
In it he adopted a position similar to Ferguson's and extended it. Building upon
the popular distinction between abstract and real knowledge, he argued that
historians were concerned with obtaining insight into "individual things." History dealt with life as it had been experienced and hence was the most immediate
and accessible form of organized knowledge. Its accessibility was ensured because present, sensate experience served as the reservoirthat enabled one to comprehend the past through re-experience.And re-experiencewas possible because
all human emotions, passions, and actions were similar. Historical description
was to render that recreation as vivid as possible; it had to bridge the chasm
separating past and present by making the past take place before our eyes, by
"banning the idea" of pastness through the creation of what Gatterer calls an
"ideal present." In this, the historian and creative writer (Dichter) were similar;
but though the effects of their work can be compared, the material they conveyed
was radically different.Unlike the writerof fiction, the historian had to be guided
by the reality principle; his imperative, though modified in reality by existential
conditions, was to present as exact a portrait as possible. The writer, at best, constructed merely possible or plausible descriptions. Gatterer described the difference as follows:
The creative writer [Dichter] creates a whole that, given the way it was constructed, never
existed. The historian, on the other hand, produces anew, through the evident nature of
his description, a whole that once was in the way that it actually did exist. He makes
the dead live and turns past into present. In a certain manner he brings himself and his
readers close to a divine understanding through his imitation, which while admittedly
weak is nevertheless true. This understanding sees nothing as past or future, nothing as
abstract;rathereverythingis present and individual. It is intuitive knowledge [anschauende
.39
Erkenntnis]

In eighteenth-century terminology, Anschauung or intuition referred to a

specific type of understanding. It entailed grasping the whole and the spirit that
animated it without losing the sense of the entity's uniqueness. It was considered
a product of reason, memory, and imagination in which the observer empathized
with the subject to acquire a form of direct, experiential understanding. As Gatterer's statement illustrates, its goal was to transcend time and place through a
poetic act. Anschauung in its perfect form was divine wisdom. 40 Here process
38. Gatterer,"Vonder Evidenz in der Geschichtkunde," in DieAllgemeine Welthistoriedie in England durch eine Gesellschaft von Gelehrten ausgefertigt worden, ed. D. F. E. Boysen (Halle, 1767),
I, 3-38. The inspiration for the article was the famous Berlin Prize Question of 1763. "On demande
si les verites metaphysiquesen general et en particulierles premiersprincipes de la Theologie naturelle
et de la Moral sont susceptibles de la meme evidence que les verites mathematiques, et en cas qu'elles
n'en soient pas susceptibles, quelle est la nature de leur certitude, a quel degreeelle peut parvenir,
et si ce degreesuffit pour la conviction?" Mendelssohn won the prize but the Academy published
both his and Kant's answers.
39. Gatterer, "Evidenz," 20.
40. Rousseau made this clear when he described divine intelligence in Emile: "elle est purement
intuitive, elle voit eglament tout ce qui est et tout se que peut etre, toutes les verites ne sont pour
elle qu'une seule idee comme tous les lieux un seul point et tous les temps un seul moment." Oeuvres
completes (Paris, 1963), IV, 593.

298

PETER HANNS REILL

disappears;it is transformed into structure, something that can be seen, that can
be perceived immediately. The equation of Anschauung with divine wisdom assumed, then, that the closer one approached an intuitive understandingof things,
the higher the form of knowledge. This being the case, many late eighteenthcentury historians aspired to understand process as well as structure by an act
of intuition or "divination." Hence, they strove to mediate between narration
and description, to see process as structure.
In their endeavors, late eighteenth-centurythinkers relied upon the two related
proceduresof analogical reasoning and comparison. Guiding these activities was
the belief that there were basic regulative patterns common to all living entities,
called by the GermansGrundformenand by Ferguson,in the statementwith which
I began this paper, "thegeneral mold of forms."Both terms are directparaphrases
of Buffon's concept of the moule interieur,his attempt to account for the limited
number of species and for regular development in a world where species were
no longer preformed. The moule interieur supposedly determined an animal's
external shape and interior structure. These Grundformen, hidden within the.
depths of organized matter, served as regulative principles, prototypes, or ideas.
For late eighteenth-century thinkers they became the functional equivalents of
general laws. They insured the step-by-step progression or regression of a living
entity. Unlike generallaws in mechanical naturalphilosophy, however,the Grundformen were not accessible to direct observation. They could only be grasped
by what Ferguson described as the "laborious induction from the infinite variety
of particulars." And that meant by analogy and comparison. But even when
grasped, however darkly, the Grundformen differedfrom axiomatic general laws,
for they were not sufficient to account adequately for individual phenomena.
The Grundformen dealt only with form, not with specific manifestation, not with
the multiplicity of life. Hence, specific content could only be apprehended by
investigatingthe action and interactionof the living and dead forces of an entity be it an individual, a language, or a nation -existing within a specific environmental context. Historical understanding was seen as combining a sense for the
formal pattern of development with an acute awarenessof the specific force field
of historical and environmental determinants existing at a given moment.
Statistical and diachronic studies were to nourish one another and to expand
the general understanding of the past. Schldzer summed up this idea in his seemingly paradoxical definition of statistics and history. "A history is a continuously
moving statistics, a statistics is a halted history."4"
University of California,
Los Angeles

41. Schldzer, Stats-Gelartheit, I, 11. "Eine Geschichte ist eine fortlaufende Statistik, eine Statistik
eine still-stehende Geschichte."