38 NARODplant may be applied in medicine or in gastronomy. Similarly, the historian is
not obliged to draw lessons from the past. Kitchen chefs may well benefit from
botanical investigations, and statesmen from historical studies, if they so wish.
None the less, the practical benefits are an incidental, not a necessary, result of
the scientific exercise.' Having said that, Smolenski passed to his famous denun-
ciation of political history, which in Poland was still obsessed with the cause and
effects of the Partitions:
To take the fall of Poland as the foundation for one's view of the past is a complete and
utter error. .. The fact that the state disappeared is important for the history of the nine-
teenth century; but there is no scientific reason why it should be seen as the cardinal event
of our entire history. Was the whole of Polish History nothing but a prelude to the
Partitions? Were there not other factors other than the defective nature of the state?...
It would be understandable for the theme of decline and fall to dominate the history of
the state, but not the history of the nation, which is the primary subject of historical
research and which did not cease to exist because of the loss of political independence... The organism we call the state is not the centre of all aspects of life, and its history is
not the quintessence of the past. In addition to creating its own state, the Polish nation
left a contribution to civilization that survived the fall, and this is the main theme of his-
tory.^39
The positivist historians would have strenuously denied that their studies were
influenced by political considerations. But by defusing the supercharged themes
of Independence and Statehood, they inevitably tranquillized the intellectual
atmosphere in which Conciliatory politics were trying to operate. (See Vol. I,
Chapter i.)
The philosophical underpinning of Conciliation took many forms. Yet in its
efforts to avoid the specifically Polish character of Messianism, it frequently
lapsed into mere imitation of foreign trends. The 'minimalists' had always been
represented in Poland, ever since the eighteenth century, in thinkers such as Jan
Sniadecki (1756—1830), an exponent of the ideas of the French Enlightenment,
or Michat Wiszniewski (1794-1865), a disciple of the Scottish 'common sense'
school; and even at the height of the Romantic craze, there were Catholic
philosophers at work like Eleonora Ziemiecka (1819-69), and in Cracow, the
Revd Stefan Pawlicki (1839-1916). After 1863, the Positivists gained the upper
hand, though by no means a monopoly. Their leader, Julian Ochorowicz
(1850-1917), a graduate of Leipzig, and the leader of 'the new direction', as he
was acclaimed in Warsaw, can be counted a follower of Comte. 'A Positivist',
he wrote, 'is a name we give to anyone whose statements are supported by evi-
dence which can be checked - a person who does not discuss doubtful matters
without qualifications and who never talks of things which are inaccessible.' In
alliance with the Neo-Kantians, he battled against the remnants of the preceding
fashion. In each of their different ways, all these philosophers served to deflect
Polish intellectual circles from revolutionary fantasies and dreams of revenge.^40
Roman Dmowski, founder in 1897 of the National Democratic Movement,
carried the ideals of Conciliation into the realm of modern party politics. Yet his