SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 63 
The historical account is not only the result of the fune- 
tioning 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 sig- 
nificance and importance of the elements of history. The 
presuppositions of historical investigation are not only cer- 
tain a priori categories of an epistemological character, 
but also certain existential judgments and value judgments 
of a metaphysical nature. These reflections which the non- 
theoretic and speculative interest projects into the histor- 
ical 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 the- 
oretic picture of the historical actuality free from all meta- 
physical sublimation. But speculation about history, the 
metaphysics of history, is in practice usually not much 
more than a combination and co-ordination into one uni- 
tary system of the assumptions and presuppositions al- 
ready at work within the historical inquiry. Therefore, 
while speculation about nature remains entirely outside 
of the field of the natural sciences, speculation about his- 
tory becomes interwoven with historical inquiry. It is man- 
ifest both in the historical narrative and in the interpreta- 
tion 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 con- 
cepts.! 
1 Ibid. pp. 185-55, 121-24.