The History of Civilization —— From the Fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution

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ISBN: 9781330463222 出版年：2016 页码：521 F Guizot Forgotten Books

France with more detail than I have been able to give to it here; and, before beginning the subject, I must request your attention a moment while I speak of his work.The perpetuity of the Roman law, from the fall of the Empire, until the regeneration of sciences and letters, is its fundamental idea. The contrary opinion was long and generally spread; it was believed that Roman law had fallen with the Empire, to be resuscitated in the twelfth century by the discovery of a manuscript of the Pandects, found at Amalfi. This is the error that M. de Savigny has wished to dissipate. His first two volumes are wholly taken up by researches into the traces of the Roman law from the fifth to the twelfth century, and in proving, by recovering its history, that it had never ceased to exist.The demonstration is convincing, and the end fully attained Still, the work, considered as a whole, and as an historical production, leaves room for some observations.Every epoch, every historical matter, if I may so speak, may be considered under three different points of view, and imposes a triple task upon the historian. He can, nay, he should first seek the facts themselves; collect and bring to light, without any aim than that of exactitude, all that has happened. The facts once recovered, it is necessary to know the laws that have governed them; how they were connected; what causes have brought about those incidents which are the life of society, and propel it, by certain ways, towards certain ends.I wish to mark with clearness and precision the difference of the two studies. Facts, properly so called, external and visible events, are the body of history; the members, braes, muscles, organs, and material elements of the past; their knowledge and description form what may be called historical anatomy. But for society, as for the individual, anatomy is not the only science. Not only do facts subsist, but they are connected with one another: they succeed each other, and arc engendered by the action of certain forces, which act under the empire of certain laws. There is, in a word, an organization and a life of societies, as well as of the individual. This organization has also its science, the science of the secret laws which preside over the course of events. This is the physiology of history.