ABSTRACT
The view which I wish to express springs from the conviction that historyis a humane study and that the study of the humanities requires a different method from the study of the sciences. It may be that human history will one day be reduced to an exact science; but at present, although scientific laws are relevant to it and condition its course, these laws are the laws of other sciences – of economics or geography or statistics – they are not the laws of history. Indeed, if history ever should become an exact science, with established laws of its own, we should then cease to study it as we do: we should apply it, as a form of engineering, and its study as a ‘humanity’ would be left to those heretics who, still believing in the freedom of the human will, might hope to disprove that grim conclusion. This being so, I am obliged to ask what is the difference in method between the study of humane subjects like history and exact sciences like engineering, and I conclude that this difference can be expressed, and I shall therefore try to express it, very simply.
