SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 63
The historical account is not only the result of the funetioning
 of certain a priori categories which make history
as such, as a theoretical structure, possible, but also of the
functioning of certain a priori judgments about the significance
 and importance of the elements of history. The
presuppositions of historical investigation are not only certain
 a priori categories of an epistemological character,
but also certain existential judgments and value judgments
of a metaphysical nature. These reflections which the nontheoretic
 and speculative interest projects into the historical
 data are elements of the metaphysics of history.
The latter is orientated in a direction different from that
of the exact historical inquiry, which aims at a purely theoretic
 picture of the historical actuality free from all metaphysical
 sublimation. But speculation about history, the
metaphysics of history, is in practice usually not much
more than a combination and co-ordination into one unitary
 system of the assumptions and presuppositions already
 at work within the historical inquiry. Therefore,
while speculation about nature remains entirely outside
of the field of the natural sciences, speculation about history
 becomes interwoven with historical inquiry. It is manifest
 both in the historical narrative and in the interpretation
 in terms of historical laws.
This analogy between the historical inquiry directed
toward the finding of historical laws and philosophical
speculation does not signify that history has become a part
of philosophy. It merely shows that similar requirements
and categories of cognition bring the material of both fields
of inquiry into similar form. The conceptual forms which
history creates, the historical laws, are similar to those of
philosophic speculation, but they are not philosophic concepts.!

1 Ibid. pp. 185-55, 121-24.