L AMPRECHT once pointed out that in the struggle between
the champions of purely political historiography and those
of the history of civilization the real point at issue had been
gradually lost to view. There could be no question of committing
history to a more or less definite content and holding it exclusively
to this: "A science is characterized only secondarily by the extent
of the field to which it relates; only with the rarest exceptions, and
never through the idea, however profound, of its own internal course
of development, will it make progress through the conquest of new
territory, for this happens only by an improvement of its methods." ¹

The boundary line thus drawn was justified, in epistemological
respects, and might have served to bring the discussion back to its
proper channel and keep it from going astray. But on the other
hand the development of science showed at every step that although
questions of content and method are logically distinct, conclusions
as to the possibility or necessity of their complete separation cannot
be based on this difference in the concrete work of scientific research
itself. Here there is rather a constant reciprocal influence and mu-
tual fertilization on the part of both factors. Every extension of the
domain of a science reacts on the concept of its method; every step
taken beyond its former territory drives it to deeper reflection on
the character and individuality of the means by which it acquires
knowledge. Hence the question of the content of history and that
of its form are continually interrelated. We have already shown that
fact in several typical examples. When Mommsen declared that the
structure of a state could be understood only through its system of
government and laws, the one-sided dominance of the purely philo-
logical method came to an end. The connection between philology
and linguistics on the one hand and law and political science on the
other was raised to a principle of historical knowledge. ² For Burck-
hardt also it was of the highest importance to separate state, re-

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