Mises, Ludwig von. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

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292 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

or sometimes even precede their occurrence. To lie

about historical facts and to destroy evidence has been

in the opinion of hosts of statesmen, diplomats, politi-

cians,

and writers a legitimate part of the conduct of

public affairs and of writing history. One of the main

problems of historical research is to unmask such false-

hoods.

The falsifiers were often prompted by the desire to

justify their own or their party's actions from the point

of view of the moral code of those whose support or at

least neutrality they were eager to win. Such white-

washing is rather paradoxical if the actions concerned

appeared unobjectionable from the point of view of

the moral ideas of the time when they occurred, and are

condemned only by the moral standards of the fab-

ricator's contemporaries.

No serious obstacles to the efforts of the historians are

created by the machinations of the forgers and falsifiers.

What is much more difficult for the historian is to

avoid being misled by spurious social and economic

doctrines.

The historian approaches the records equipped with

the knowledge he has acquired in the fields of logic,

praxeology, and the natural sciences. If this knowledge

is defective, the result of his examination and analysis

of the material will be vitiated. A good part of the last

eighty years' contributions to economic and social his-

tory is almost useless on account of the writers' insuffi-

cient grasp of economics. The historicist thesis that the

historian needs no acquaintance with economics and

should even spurn it has vitiated the work of several

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 293

generations of historians. Still more devastating was the

effect of historicism upon those who called their publi-

cations describing various social and business condi-

tions of the recent past economic research.

5. History and Humanism

Pragmatic philosophy appreciates knowledge because

it gives power and makes people fit to accomplish

things. From this point of view the positivists reject his-

tory as useless. We have tried to demonstrate the serv-

ice that history renders to acting man in making him

understand the situation in which he has to act. We

have tried to provide a practical justification of history.

But there is more than this in the study of history. It

not only provides knowledge indispensable to prepar-

ing political decisions. It opens the mind toward an

understanding of human nature and destiny. It in-

creases wisdom. It is the very essence of that much mis-

interpreted concept, a liberal education. It is the fore-

most approach to humanism, the lore of the specifically

human concerns that distinguish man from other liv-

ing beings.

The newborn child has inherited from his ancestors

the physiological features of the species. He does not

inherit the ideological characteristics of human ex-

istence, the desire for learning and knowing. What dis-

tinguishes civilized man from a barbarian must be

acquired by every individual anew. Protracted strenu-

ous exertion is needed to take possession of man's spirit-

ual legacy.

294 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Personal culture is more than mere familiarity with

the present state of science, technology, and civic af-

fairs.

It is more than acquaintance with books and

paintings and the experience of travel and of visits to

museums. It is the assimilation of the ideas that roused

mankind from the inert routine of a merely animal ex-

istence to a Me of reasoning and speculating. It is the

individual's effort to humanize himself by partaking in

the tradition of all the best that earlier generations

have bequeathed.

The positivist detractors of history contend that pre-

occupation with things past diverts people's attention

from the main task of mankind, the improvement of fu-

ture conditions. No blame could be more undeserved.

History looks backward into the past, but the lesson it

teaches concerns things to come. It does not teach in-

dolent quietism; it rouses man to emulate the deeds of

earlier generations. It addresses men as Dante's Ulysses

addressed his companions:

Considerate la vostra semenza:

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,

Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza.

The dark ages were not dark because people were

committed to study of the intellectual treasures left by

ancient Hellenic civilization; they were dark so long as

these treasures were hidden and dormant. Once they

L'Inferno, xxvi, 118-20. In the translation by Longfellow:

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;

Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,

But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 295

came to light again and began to stimulate the minds

of the most advanced thinkers, they contributed sub-

stantially to the inauguration of what is called today

Western civilization. The much criticized term "Renais-

sance" is pertinent in that it stresses the part the legacy

of antiquity played in the evolution of all the spiritual

features of the West. (The question whether the begin-

ning of the Renaissance should not be dated some cen-

turies farther back than Burckhardt set it need not

concern us here.)

The scions of the barbarian conquerors who first

began to study the ancients seriously were struck with

awe. They realized that they and their contemporaries

were faced with ideas they themselves could not have

developed. They could not help thinking of the philoso-

phy, the literature, and the arts of the classical age of

Greece and Rome as unsurpassable. They saw no road

to knowledge and wisdom but that paved by the an-

cients. To qualify a spiritual achievement as modern

had for them a pejorative connotation. But slowly,

from the seventeenth century on, people became aware

that the West was coming of age and creating a culture

of its own. They no longer bemoaned the disappearance

of a golden age of the arts and of learning, irretrievably

lost, and no longer thought of the ancient masterpieces

as models to be imitated but never equaled, still less

surpassed. They came to substitute the idea of progres-

sive improvement for the previously held idea of pro-

gressive degeneration.

In this intellectual development that taught modern

Europe to know its own worth and produced the

self-

296 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

reliance of modern Western civilization, the study of

history was paramount. The course of human affairs

was no longer viewed as a mere struggle of ambitious

princes and army leaders for power, wealth, and glory.

The historians discovered in the flux of events the op-

eration of other forces than those commonly styled

political and military. They began to regard the histori-

cal process as actuated by man's urge toward better-

ment. They disagreed widely in their judgments of

value and in their appraisal of the various ends aimed

at by governments and reformers. But they were nearly

unanimous in holding that the main concern of every

generation is to render conditions more satisfactory

than their ancestors left them. They announced prog-

ress toward a better state of civic affairs as the main

theme of human endeavor.

Faithfulness to tradition means to the historian ob-

servance of the fundamental rule of human action,

namely, ceaseless striving to improve conditions. It

does not mean preservation of unsuitable old institu-

tions and clinging to doctrines long since discredited by

more tenable theories. It does not imply any concession

to the point of view of historicism.

6. History and the Rise of Aggressive Nationalism

The historian should utilize in his studies all the

knowledge that the other disciplines place at his dis-

posal. Inadequacy in this knowledge affects the re-

sults of his work.

If we were to consider the Homeric epics merely as

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 297

historical narratives, we would have to judge them un-

satisfactory on account of the theology or mythology

used to interpret and explain facts. Personal and politi-

cal conflicts between princes and heroes, the spread of

a plague, meteorological conditions, and other happen-

ings were attributed to the interference of gods. Mod-

ern historians refrain from tracing back earthly events

to supernatural causes. They avoid propositions that

would manifestly contradict the teachings of the natural

sciences. But they are often ignorant of economics and

committed to untenable doctrines concerning the prob-

lems of economic policies. Many cling to neomercan-

tilism, the social philosophy adopted almost without

exception by contemporary political parties and gov-

ernments and taught at all universities. They approve

the fundamental thesis of mercantilism that the gain

of one nation is the damage of other nations; that no

nation can win but by the loss of others. They think an

irreconcilable conflict of interests prevails among na-

tions.

From this point of view many or even most his-

torians interpret all events. The violent clash of na-

tions is in their eyes a necessary consequence of a

nature-given and inevitable antagonism. This antago-

nism cannot be removed by any arrangement of in-

ternational relations. The advocates of integral free

trade, the Manchester or laissez-faire Liberals, are,

they think, unrealistic and do not see that free trade

hurts the vital interests of any nation resorting to it.

It is not surprising that the average historian shares

the fallacies and misconceptions prevailing among his

contemporaries. It was, however, not the historians but

298 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

the anti-economists who developed the modern ide-

ology of international conflict and aggressive nation-

alism. The historians merely adopted and applied it. It

is not especially remarkable that in their writings they

took the side of their own nation and tried to justify

its claims and pretensions.

Books on history, especially those on the history of

one's own country, appeal more to the general reader

than do tracts on economic policy. The audience of the

historians is broader than that of the authors of books

on the balance of payments, foreign exchange control,

and similar matters. This explains why historians are

often considered the leading fomenters of the revival

of the warlike spirit and of the resulting wars of our

age.

Actually they have merely popularized the teach-

ings of pseudo economists.

7. History and Judgments of Value

The subject of history is action and the judgments of

value directing action toward definite ends. History

deals with values, but it itself does not value. It looks

upon events with the eyes of an unaffected observer.

This is, of course, the characteristic mark of objective

thought and of the scientific search for truth. Truth

refers to what is or was, not to a state of affairs that

is not or was not but that would suit the wishes of the

truth-seeker better.

There is no need to add anything to what has been

said in the first part of this essay about the futility of

the search for absolute and eternal values. History is

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 299

no better able than any other science to provide stand-

ards of value that would be more than personal judg-

ments pronounced then and there by mortal men and

rejected then and there by other mortal men.

There are authors who assert that it is logically im-

possible to deal with historical facts without expressing

judgments of value. As they see it, one cannot say

anything relevant about these things without making

one value judgment after another. If, for example, one

deals with such phenomena as pressure groups or prosti-

tution, one has to realize that these phenomena them-

selves "are, as it were, constituted by value judg-

ments ."

Now, it is true that many people employ

such terms as "pressure group" and almost every one

the term "prostitution" in a way that implies a judgment

of value. But this does not mean that the phenomena to

which these terms refer are constituted by value judg-

ments. Prostitution is defined by Geoffrey May as "the

practice of habitual or intermittent sexual union, more

or less promiscuous, for mercenary inducement/'

pressure group is a group aiming to attain legislation

thought favorable to the interests of the group mem-

bers.

There is no valuation whatever implied in the

mere use of such terms or in the reference to such

phenomena. It is not true that history, if it has to avoid

value judgments, would not be permitted to speak of

cruelty.

The first meaning of the word "cruel" in the

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, University

of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 53.

G. May,

"Prostitution,"

Encyclopaedia

of the

Social

Sciences,

12,

553.

Strauss, p. 52.

300 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Concise Oxford Dictionary is "indifferent to, delight-

ing in, another's pain."

This definition is no less ob-

jective and free from any valuation than that given by

the same dictionary for sadism: "sexual perversion

marked by love of cruelty."

As a psychiatrist employs

the term "sadism" to describe the condition of a patient,

a historian may refer to "cruelty" in describing certain

actions. A dispute that may arise as to what causes

pain and what not, or as to whether in a concrete case

pain was inflicted because it gave pleasure to the actor

or for other reasons, is concerned with establishing

facts,

not making judgments of value.

The problem of history's neutrality as to judgments

of value must not be confused with that of the attempts

to falsify the historical account. There have been his-

torians who were eager to represent battles lost by

their own nation's armed forces as victories and who

claimed for their own people, race, party, or faith every-

thing they regarded as meritorious and exculpated them

from everything they regarded as objectionable. The

textbooks of history prepared for the public schools are

marked by a rather naive parochialism and chauvinism.

There is no need to dwell on such futilities. But it must

be admitted that even for the most conscientious his-

torian abstention from judgments of value may offer

certain difficulties.

As a man and as a citizen the historian takes sides

in many feuds and controversies of his age. It is not

3d ed., 1934, p. 273.

5. Ibid., p. 1042.

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 301

easy to combine scientific aloofness in historical studies

with partisanship in mundane interests. But that can

and has been achieved by outstanding historians. The

historian's world view may color his work. His repre-

sentation of events may be interlarded with remarks

that betray his feelings and wishes and divulge his

party affiliation. However, the postulate of scientific his-

tory's abstention from value judgments is not infringed

by occasional remarks expressing the preferences of

the historian if the general purport of the study is

not affected. If the writer, speaking of an inept com-

mander of the forces of his own nation or party, says

"unfortunately*' the general was not equal to his task,

he has not failed in his duty as a historian. The his-

torian is free to lament the destruction of the master-

pieces of Greek art provided his regret does not influ-

ence his report of the events that brought about this

destruction.

The problem of Wertfreiheit must also be clearly dis-

tinguished from that of the choice of theories resorted

to for the interpretation of facts. In dealing with the

data available, the historian needs all the knowledge

provided by the other disciplines, by logic, mathe-

matics, praxeology, and the natural sciences. If what

these disciplines teach is insufficient or if the historian

chooses an erroneous theory out of several conflicting

theories held by the specialists, his effort is misled and

his performance is abortive. It may be that he chose

an untenable theory because he was biased and this

theory best suited his party spirit. But the acceptance