A
supposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that
accidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish the
concrete fact from the abstraction. And for the same reason, progress
has nothing to do with the so-called _law of evolution_. If evolution
mean the concrete fact of reality which evolves (that is, which is
reality), it is not a law. If, on the other hand, it be a law, it
becomes confounded with the law of progress in the sense just described.
The progress of which we speak here, is nothing but the _concept of
human activity itself_, which, working upon the material supplied to it
by nature, conquers obstacles and bends nature to its own ends.
Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity applied
to a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian of
humanity. No one but a mere collector of stray facts, a simple seeker,
or an incoherent chronicler, can put together the smallest narrative of
human deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, an
intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which
he has undertaken to relate. The historical work of art cannot be
achieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save by
means of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definite
figure from that rough and incoherent mass.
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