62 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
whether the historical movement is a self-sufficient unity 
or of value and significance only in relation to cosmic move- 
ments. It deals with the transcendental purpose and the 
transcendental reality which lie behind the historical actu- 
ality as the noumena behind the phenomena. 
These and similar questions may leave the historical 
investigation itself largely untouched. They can be an- 
swered differently for the same historical facts. The ac- 
ceptance of a personal God who guides the historical de- 
velopment for a purpose unknown or revealed would only 
change the causal into a teleological series without chang- 
ing its content or the relations between its elements. The 
metaphysics of history takes the theoretic historical knowl- 
edge for granted. In so far as it deals with value judgments 
it is a non-theoretic accentuation of the historical series 
crystallized into a special structure.! 
Historical Inquiry and the Search for Historical Laws 
The essential characteristic of the exact historical in- 
quiry is an interest in the historical actuality as such direct- 
ed toward the factualness of its content and free from all 
metaphysical sublimation. 
But the distinction between the exact and the meta- 
physical thought form, which are conceived as separate 
and distinct concepts in a methodological inquiry, is not 
maintained in the actual historical investigation. Histori- 
cal interpretations, especially those which are formulated 
in terms of historical laws, are the result of both forms of 
inquiry. The reason for this is that an inquiry into the 
existence of historical laws is guided by a thought form 
which bears a much closer resemblance to philosophic spec- 
ulation than to the method of exact science. 
L Probl. der Gesch., pp. 126-32.