Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven

History examines the manifestation of the connection between human free will and the external world from the perspective of time and causality.That is, to explain this freedom by the laws of reason, and history is therefore a science only in so far as it explains free will by these laws. As far as history is concerned, the recognition of human freedom as a force capable of influencing historical events, that is, something that does not obey the law, is the same as for astronomy, the recognition of the movement of celestial bodies is a free force. To admit this removes the possibility of laws, that is, of any knowledge.If there is a celestial body moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton no longer exist, and neither does any concept of celestial body motion.If there is a free action of man, then there is no law of history, no conception of historical events.

As far as history is concerned, human will has several lines of movement, one end of which is hidden in the unknown world, but at the other end, a present human will is active in space, time, and causality. The wider this field of activity unfolds before our eyes, the more apparent is its law.It is the task of history to discover and explain those laws. For historical science, starting from the point of view it now takes upon its object, and following the path it now follows in seeking the causes of phenomena in the free will of man, it is impossible for historical science to elucidate laws, because, whatever How can we limit the action of human free will, as long as it is regarded as a force not governed by law, and law cannot exist.

Only by restricting this power of free will infinitely, that is, as an infinitesimal quantity, can we believe that causes are utterly incomprehensible, and history makes it its task to seek laws instead of causes. . The search for these laws has already begun, and the new ways of thinking that history should absorb are being adopted at the same time as the old history that constantly analyzes the causes of phenomena is self-destructing. The sciences of all mankind follow this path.When mathematics, the most precise science, obtains infinite decimals, it abandons the process of analysis and begins a new process of summing unknown infinite decimals.Mathematics abandons the concept of cause and seeks laws, that is, seeks the common properties of all unknown infinitesimal elements.

Other sciences work along the same lines, though in different forms.When Newton proclaimed the law of universal gravitation, he did not say that the sun or the earth had an attractive property; he said that all bodies, from the largest to the smallest, had the property of attracting each other; Problems to illustrate the properties common to all objects from infinitely large to infinitely small.The same is true of the various natural sciences: they set aside the question of causes and seek laws.History is also on this road.If history is the study of the movement of all human beings of all peoples, rather than the recording of fragments of individual lives, it should also cast aside the notion of cause and seek those freedoms which are equal, closely related, and infinitely small. Laws common to the elements of the will.