ON THE HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
BY RAYMOND D. CAHALL
For more than a score of years I have
been giving a course
at Kenyon College on the
"Intellectual History of Europe." It
has been a combination of James Harvey
Robinson's course and
of the reading of the greatest books
dealt with in that course. As
I have brought it up to date, added
here, or diminished there, I
have sought to avoid the panoramic and
encyclopedic, and have
tried to lead my students to a fuller
understanding of the more
important intellectual tendencies by
long evenings spent in the
discussion of some twenty-odd great
books. The students take
their turns at leading the discussion,
and I am appealed to only
in case of disagreement or ignorance.
The method has worked
well, the results depending on the
ability of successive groups
of students.
Some time ago, I became curious to learn
more than has
been published about how what is known
as intellectual history
came into existence. This paper is a
partial report.
All the world knows that from time to
time men have asked
the Past to reveal its secrets and their
questions have varied in
the same way as their interests have varied. If there were
records extant to throw light on their
novel inquiries, they have
been successful in producing "new
histories." So it was that
St. Augustine and Orosius sought for a
"new history" in the
fifth century and Francois Marie Arouet
in the eighteenth. The
latter accompanied his questions with
brave words. To his old
tutor, the Abbe d'Olivet, Voltaire
likened himself to a painter
collecting materials of all kinds.
Battles and revolutions, con-
quest and defeat, common to all ages,
were to give ground to the
arts and intellectual progress on his
great canvas of the age of
Louis XIV. He intimated a lack of
materials for his venture by
concluding: "So, my dear Abbe, if
you know of any source from
(173)
174 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
which I can get anecdotes of our arts
and artists, of any sort or
kind, let me know. There will be a place
for everything." When
he got down to the writing of it,
however, the best he could do
was to limit the military and diplomatic
history to eighteen out of
thirty-nine chapters. The "new
history" consisted of about
thirty pages of literature, art,
philosophy, science and academies,
and of numerous chapters of anecdotes,
of religious controvercies
and affairs of church and state. About
two and a half percent
of the book was devoted to a sketchy
treatment of what we think
of as intellectual history. Here, at
least, was a beginning.
Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs et
L'esprit covered a wide
chronological sweep and ranged all over
the world from China
to America. There is no evidence that he
sought to discover the
interaction of civilizations upon each
other, but only to illustrate
his tolerance and to satisfy the
curiosity of his readers. For,
after all, this ambitious project had
been undertaken in its in-
ception by the desire to produce a more
entertaining and discrim-
inating type of history than that which
had repelled his scientific
friend, Madame du Chatelet. Written, as
Voltaire pretended, to
be a sequel to Bossuet's Discours sur
l'Histoire Universelle, it fol-
lowed not a providential conception of
the past, but the secular ac-
counts of Guicciardini and Machiavelli.
No contrast could have
been greater. Voltaire complained that
Bossuet had made history
revolve around God's relations with the
Jews. If God wished to
punish them he raised up the Empire of
Babylon or brought in
the Romans; if God had Cyrus reign, it
was only to avenge them.
Voltaire himself insisted that the only
way to explain the enigma
of the world was to study three things,
which constantly im-
pinged upon the "spirit" of
man: climate, government, and re-
ligion--a secular explanation like that
of Montesquieu in his
Esprit des Lois. Nearly six percent of the Essai might pass for
intellectual history and much more for
the "new history."
These two works influenced later
historians such as Buckle
toward a philosophy of history, or
others such as Hume toward
the introduction of new materials into
political history, or again
a Condorcet, who in his "Sketch of
the Progress of the Human
Mind," carried Voltaire's rejection
of conventional historical ma-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942
175
terials to the extremest point. So must Voltaire stand forth
prominently if not first in the history
of intellectual history.
Voltaire had quarried materials from
Pierre Bayle's Dic-
tionnaire historique et critique and perhaps from Daniel Morhof's
Polyhistor. The latter was a history of literature, and from it
evolved through the works of Andres,
Tiraboschi, Gingene, and
many studies of special subjects, the
remarkable four-volume
treatment of Henry Hallam, the Introduction
to the Literature of
Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth,
and Seventeenth Centuries.
Hallam employs the widest interpretation
of the term "literary
history." To him it signifies all
branches of knowledge imparted
through books. His work is the first
real history of the intel-
lectual class. Poets, dramatists,
essayists, have their place, but
the bulk of the work concerns scholars,
philosophers, theologians,
political thinkers, economists,
scientists, jurists and enough others
to give a full picture of intellectual
activities from the Middle
Ages to the beginning of the eighteenth
century. The develop-
ment of the tools and agencies of the
intellectual class is set in
an adequate historical setting. His
treatment adds to that of
Professor Robinson the histories of
classical scholarship and in-
ternational law, Jesuit education,
theology, Utopian thought and
modern philosophy. Of course we have
fuller accounts and his-
torical backgrounds, and in some cases,
more accurate informa-
tion, but the writer of this paper is
much impressed with the
comprehensive pattern which Hallam set
for future writers, and
that less than a hundred years after
Voltaire's beginnings. Lord
Bacon's famous passage in the Advancement
of Learning about
the deficiencies in history, likening it
to a statue of Polyphemus
without its eye, avowedly provided the
inspiration for Hallam.
By giving (to quote Bacon) "the
origin and antiquities of every
science, the methods by which it has
been taught, the sects and con-
troversies it has occasioned, the
colleges and academies in which
it has been cultivated, its relations to
civil government and com-
mon society, and the physical and
temporary causes which have
influenced its condition," Hallam,
as it were, gave eyesight to
hitherto sightless History.
176 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Another ingredient which has gone into
the making of in-
tellectual history has been a mild dose
of the so-called philosophy
of history--not the thoughtful approach
to the past that Voltaire
meant when he used the term, but a
philosophic search for laws--
for the ultimate--which might be deduced
from historical phe-
nomena. It was an essentially
theological quest because it sought
to find active and final causes to
replace the outmoded providential
assumptions of sacred history. Its followers differed widely,
their principles being rather deduced
from pure concepts, il-
lustrated rather than proved by
historical facts. They have, it
must be admitted, been provocative to
historians, but only two or
three of the less philosophic and more
historical "philosophers"
have influenced the development of
intellectual history.
Henry T. Buckle was one of these. In his
huge Introduc-
tion to the History of Civilization
in England published in 1857,
Buckle provided a philosophy for future
students of the past, if
they cared to follow it. Whether
inspired by Montesquieu or
some later writer on geography, he began
by asserting that cli-
mate, soil and food govern intellectual
progress indirectly by
determining the accumulation and
distribution of wealth, and that
the general aspect of nature governs
intellectual development
directly by influencing the cast and vigor of thought. Buckle
in-
sists that since European man had
conquered nature more than
man elsewhere, his history has been
characterized by a steady
growth in the importance of intellectual
laws and a steady diminu-
tion in the influence of physical laws.
In the European situation,
nature could be almost disregarded,
which left only mental laws,
divided into moral and intellectual
laws. Buckle then asserts that
moral laws remain relatively static
while intellectual laws reflect
change and are the decisive influence in
accelerating the progress
of man. The advance of any people, he
claims, depends upon
the amount of knowledge possessed by the
ablest men, how that
knowledge is applied, and how far it is
diffused through the
people. He speaks of a class of
Europeans which he calls the
"intellectual class" as having grown steadily in numbers from the
fourteenth century, and as having drawn
the best intellects away
from the church and the army.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942 177
Here first, one finds a man who claims
that as significant
change occurs chiefly in the
intellectual field, one must, to un-
derstand history, study the intellectual
class and attempt to de-
cipher through this class all important
intellectual laws.
Unfortunately, Buckle got no farther
than his 672-page In-
troduction. Yet his influence was shown in the writings of
several men and in none more
significantly than in the History of
the Intellectual Development of
Europe by John W. Draper, pub-
lished six years after Buckle's Introduction. Draper was an
Anglo-American scientist of great
versatility. In 1856 he had
published a book called Human
Physiology, on the influence of
the mechanical and physico-chemical upon
man's life processes
and in 1860 he delivered a lecture at
the meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of
Science at Oxford in which
he applied the principles of his Human
Physiology to the develop-
ment of society. This paper made such an
impression that Draper
was encouraged to fill out his treatment
in book form. Three
years later his Intellectual Development appeared--to run into
edition after edition, and to receive
(perhaps because there was
no criterion for judgment of such a
work) the most fulsome
praise. Thus a contemporary reviewer
said of his work: "What
Comte said might and ought to be done
for the whole world,
what Buckle commenced for England,
Scotland, France, and
Spain, Draper has effected for the whole
of Europe."
Draper, like Buckle, emphasizes the
influence of geography
upon man's development but insists with
him that European man
has almost enfranchised himself from
nature's yoke through his
inventions. Then he develops his own
thesis that the life of a
community, a nation, Europe itself is
analagous to that of an
individual and passes through the same
states of infancy, child-
hood, youth, maturity and old age. He
goes further to associate
spiritual analogies with time periods by
dividing the history of
Europe into five ages: (1) the Age of
Credulity, (2) the Age
of Inquiry, (3) the Age of Faith, (4)
the Age of Reason, and
(5) the Age of Decrepitude. He admits
that within a community
there are people in all stages of
spiritual growth but insists that
the intellectual class, having passed
through these stages, is
178 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
always the true representative of the
state, and the development
of the intellectual class is the product
of law as inexorably as
the evolution of the earth, and Draper
concludes, as he describes
the great discoveries and inventions of
his day, that "neither
government nor other human authority can
stop this intellectual
advancement, for it forces its way by an
organic law, over which
they have no kind of control."
Draper devoted the part of his book
called the Age of Reason.
to four chapters on the advance of
science, without touching on
Darwin and the origin of species. His Age
of Reason is without
a Voltaire and the "philosophes,"
without the development of
Deism, although he was a Deist himself.
Yet, defective as it was,
Draper's magnum opus provided a
history of great chronological
sweep, devoting the better part of six
hundred pages to a synthesis
of history, religion, philosophy,
literature and science and in a not
inadequate political development. The
outlines of an intellectual
history through the ages were
thus emerging.
The origin of his book, you remember,
was the paper Draper
had read before the British Association
for the Advancement of
Science in 1860. On that occasion,
Darwin's Origin of Species
came up for discussion and the famous
tilt between Bishop Wil-
berforce and Thomas Huxley took place
amidst cheers for Huxley
from a hostile, but sportsmanlike
audience. Draper has left no
account as to this clash, although
several prominent men have,
but it might well have suggested the
subject for his next book in
intellectual history. This was the History
of the Conflict between
Religion and Science, which was probably pushed to completion
in answer to the Encyclical Letter
and Syllabus of Pope Pius IX.
In the meantime, another protagonist of
science had been
drawn into the lists. Far off in Ann
Arbor, a young professor
of history, Andrew D. White, was
drinking deep draughts of
Buckley, Lecky and Draper, and was, in
his own words, "learn-
ing that history was less and less a
matter of annals, and more and
more a record of the unfolding of
humanity." The upshot of this
study and of the sectarian attempts to
fight the science program,
which White was later on attempting to
carry out as president of
Ezra Cornell's young university in
Ithaca, was an historical lec-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942 179
ture delivered in Cooper Institute on
the "Battlefield of Science,"
which had to be repeated in lecture or
magazine form all over the
country. The magazine articles were put
into a little book, The
Warfare of Science, to which Professor John Tyndall wrote a
preface. This little book was
supplemented'by "New Chapters in
the Warfare of Science," published
in the Popular Science
Monthly. Then with the advice, criticisms and extensive re-
searches of Professor George L. Burr and
other historians, the
definitive History of the Warfare of
Science and Theology reached
the public in 1895, which by that time
had been so well indoctrin-
ated as to receive it, according to the
author, with very little
criticism.
In the 1860's, at the time of
Draper's and White's first per-
formances, another writer began to throw
light upon further ac-
tivities of the intellectual class.
William Edward Lecky began
with an anonymous volume, The
Religious Tendencies of the Age,
followed it in 1863 with the Declining
Sense of the Miraculous, and
published the two volumes of the Rise
and Influence of the Spirit
of Rationalism in Europe in 1865. In all these he attempted to
show the development of reason and the
decay of superstition
as a power in society, and his
achievement was very creditable for
a young man of twenty-seven. One notices
the influence of Buckle
in the introduction to the History of
Rationalism, for example,
the advocacy of statistics as a means of
arriving at uniformities
of human behavior. Like Buckle, Lecky, however, did not use
statistics, perhaps because of their
paucity at that time. Like
Buckle, Lecky thought of intellectual
influences as the dynamic
element in history. The tone and habit
of thought of a period he
believed were largely due to master
minds, such as Bacon, Des-
cartes and Locke, but they were
influenced too by thinking men-
from social, political and economic
theorists to the great discover-
ers and inventors. "It is
probable," says Lecky, in a mild outburst
of prophecy, "that Watt and
Stephenson will eventually modify
the opinions of mankind almost as
profoundly as Luther or Vol-
taire."
Like Buckle, Lecky held that inexorable
law could be dis-
cerned in historical phenomena. For
instance, he sought to prove
180
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
that intellectual and moral conditions
produced a climate of opinion
in which certain theological opinions
were abandoned, not because
of their irrationality, but because they
simply could not live in that
climate. For example, the belief in
miracles ceased to be held,
when it became incompatible with the
findings of physical science.
How well the writer remembers a heated
discussion in Professor
Robinson's seminar as to whether Lecky
was not simply replacing
one authority by another and whether he
was not denying in one
part of his work the achievements of a
Bayle, Voltaire or Hume,
that he had celebrated in another.
Surely, we then concluded, the
reasoning of men has helped to discredit
miracles, intolerance and
persecution. In the defense of science
it had overthrown popular
and theological prejudices. Why should
the defeat of theology be
attributed to law, and not to reason?
Some of us concluded that
the author of the History of
Rationalism was not a true rationalist.
Only two or three of Lecky's successors
can be mentioned
here. They leaned upon Lecky, but gave
him little or no credit.
Leslie Stephen wrote a two-volume work
on the History of Eng-
lish Thought in the 18th Century in which his treatment of po-
litical theory and political economy
reflects Lecky, but he came
to write the book, he says, by reading
Mark Pattison's Tendencies
of Religious Thought in England and through his own Essays on
Freethinking and Plainspeaking. As these concerned chiefly the
English Deists, he must have drawn
heavily on Hallam and Lecky
for the broad outline of his treatment.
He supplemented Hallam,
who ended his book in 1700 with more
adequate pictures of the
eighteenth century
intellectuals--devoting thirty-two pages each to
Hume and Burke and thirteen to Adam
Smith. This was in
1874.
A quarter of a century later, another
type of intellectual
history began to make its appearance in
Europe. John Theodore
Merz published his four-volume work on A
History of European
Thought in the Nineteenth Century. This set a new standard in
scholarship and comprehensiveness but
was less satisfactory to the
historian in its purposes and
arrangement. Merz was born in Man-
chester, England, but was educated in
Germany and at the age of
forty-four had produced a
biography of Leibnitz in a Philosophical
OHIO
HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942 181
Classics series, and followed it a decade and a half later with
the
first of his volumes on the history of
thought. In this work, his
approach is that of the philosopher,
although he was not inter-
ested in expounding different
philosophical systems, "but," as he
says, "in tracing the leading ideas
which have survived these sys-
tems themselves and become the common
property of the philo-
sophical mind at the present day."
Therefore, he devoted nearly
nine hundred pages in the first two
volumes to various views of
nature, such as the kinetic, the
morphological, the genetic, vital-
istic, astronomical, etc. Men come and
go in his pages, but the
idea is of paramount importance and is traced rigorously to
the
end. His history of ideas has been the
inspiration of many
philosophers to treat ideas genetically
in books and magazines.
Meanwhile it has been provocative to
historians--especially the
beginning chapters on the scientific
spirit in France, Germany and
England.
It remained for James Harvey Robinson to
effect the first
synthesis of the contributions of his
predecessors and of his con-
temporaries in his lectures on
"Intellectual History" in Columbia
University. Professor Robinson was well
equipped to do this.
Most of those heretofore mentioned
approached their tasks with-
out training in historical research.
Robinson had been an intense
student of scource material in Germany
and at the universities of
Pennsylvania and Columbia where he had
taught. He began with
von Ranke's conception of reproducing an
historical situation
from the sources as it actually existed.
He was, according to
Professor Cheyney, at home in the Monumenta,
the Documents
inedits, the Rolls Series and Migne's Patrologia and
knew how to
handle his DuCange, Potthast, Molinier,
Giry and Wattenbach.
His textual criticism had been pushed
from the French Revolu-
tion back to the Reformation and through
the Middle Ages to
Rome--all this in the soundest
historical manner. Meanwhile, his
speculations had been excited by very
different stimuli: (1) by
the French Rationalists' assumptions
concerning the origins of
civilization, and (2) by the
biologists' genetic view of human de-
velopment. Robinson's earlier interest
in biology and later asso-
ciation with Professors Conklin and
Thorndike had made him an
182
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
intelligent observer of how the student
of nature actually goes to
work. Similarly, he learned directly
from anthropologists like Pro-
fessor Boas and archaeologists and
students of remote times like
Professors Botsford and Breasted, in
addition to reading the latest
works in their fields.
It was then a searcher for truth among
the specialists of his
day as well as a reader of books who
progressed "from pagan
culture to the ancient Orient, from
oriental culture to that of
primitive man, and anthropology pushed
him still further into a
study of comparative psychology and
animal behavior." This
part of the synthesis had not been
foreshadowed by his prede-
cessors.
The men previously mentioned also
influenced the pattern of
his course and his attitude toward the
past. Although he dwelt
upon retrogression and stagnation as
well as progress in history,
he held with Lecky that the long-time
trend of history stretched
in one direction: the way of progressive
civilization. Furthermore,
in spite of the sympathy with which he
dealt with the Medieval
Church, his view was that of Draper,
Lecky and White, "that the
intellectual development of the race had
been attended with a
struggle between supernaturalism, dogma
and bigotry on the
one hand, and critical thought and the
inductive method on the
other."
In the last part of his course, the
treatment of the latest age,
Robinson again made an original
contribution to the synthesis.
Not that the subjects treated had not
been treated in one form
or another before, but that the triumphs
of the latest age since
an Andrew D. White had written had
become so numerous. These
he included in his treatment and pointed
out their significance.
Still was Robinson not too optimistic as
he welcomed the social
sciences as allies of history and
specialists of social ills. Rather
was he the first to note the dangerous
cultural lag of man's social,
political and economic institutions
behind his conquest of nature.
Like a true student of intellectual
history, he blamed this upon
intellectual lag. "It is," he
said, "because we have not brought
our thinking up to date. Our minds are
not yet fitted to enjoy
the machine age and the international
order which a very few
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942 183
scientists and inventors have created
for us." Were he alive today,
he would understand the perversion of
man's achievements to his
own destruction.
Professor Robinson's course of sixty-odd
lectures, as many
know, have never been put into book
form. He apparently chose
to give the public only meager outlines
in several popular works,
instead of the three or four volumes
which his class treatment and
vast reserve fund of information seemed
to warrant. Dr. Harry
Elmer Barnes has done what he could to
remedy this defect in
his single volume Intellectual and
Cultural History of Europe.
Other disciples have chosen to work on
special topics or in special
fields. As barbarism and obscurantism
extend their blighting
effects over the earth's surface, the
project suggested by Lord
Bacon nearly three and a half centuries
ago seems increasingly
distant of fulfillment.
ON THE HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
BY RAYMOND D. CAHALL
For more than a score of years I have
been giving a course
at Kenyon College on the
"Intellectual History of Europe." It
has been a combination of James Harvey
Robinson's course and
of the reading of the greatest books
dealt with in that course. As
I have brought it up to date, added
here, or diminished there, I
have sought to avoid the panoramic and
encyclopedic, and have
tried to lead my students to a fuller
understanding of the more
important intellectual tendencies by
long evenings spent in the
discussion of some twenty-odd great
books. The students take
their turns at leading the discussion,
and I am appealed to only
in case of disagreement or ignorance.
The method has worked
well, the results depending on the
ability of successive groups
of students.
Some time ago, I became curious to learn
more than has
been published about how what is known
as intellectual history
came into existence. This paper is a
partial report.
All the world knows that from time to
time men have asked
the Past to reveal its secrets and their
questions have varied in
the same way as their interests have varied. If there were
records extant to throw light on their
novel inquiries, they have
been successful in producing "new
histories." So it was that
St. Augustine and Orosius sought for a
"new history" in the
fifth century and Francois Marie Arouet
in the eighteenth. The
latter accompanied his questions with
brave words. To his old
tutor, the Abbe d'Olivet, Voltaire
likened himself to a painter
collecting materials of all kinds.
Battles and revolutions, con-
quest and defeat, common to all ages,
were to give ground to the
arts and intellectual progress on his
great canvas of the age of
Louis XIV. He intimated a lack of
materials for his venture by
concluding: "So, my dear Abbe, if
you know of any source from
(173)