"Ranke is cold and unenthusiastic; and, in judging individuals, it is well to be cold and unenthusiastic. But is there no room for warmth of feeling in recounting the efforts and the struggles of the race? Is it not possible to do for history what Darwin has done for science? Ranke, at all events, did not do it. He knew of the influence upon individuals of great waves of feeling and opinion; but he does not seek for the law of human progress which underlies them. He does not rejoice in that progress, or grieve at failure. Hence, perhaps, in part his preference for writing the history of many nations during the same period, rather than the history of one nation consecutively. To say this, however, is only to say that there is no finality in scientific progress. Whatever shape the histories of the future may take, they will assuredly be built on the foundations which Ranke has laid down with unerring hand."
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Samuel Rawson Gardiner, 'Leopold von Ranke', The Academy, No. 734 (29 May 1886), p. 381
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke
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Leopold von Ranke
1795 – 1886
deutscher Historiker
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