ABSTRACT
Two principles are generally relied on as axiomatic in the popular philosophy of the day, viz. that nothing is explicable except in terms of its history, and that the value of anything is independent of its history. The attempt to derive theologico-ethical values from history begins with Augustine and his disciple Orosius, and continues to the middle of the nineteenth century in works as Baron Bunsen’s God in History. In the former case the historian has to supplement the facts before him with hypothetical ones—in which process he is obviously dependent on his general philosophy of life or schema of relative values. Historical arguments frequently seem most effective against absolutistic theories of value. Value and historical existence are independent of each other in the same sense that the two blades which form a pair of scissors are independent of each other.
