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 THE GR11 TRAIL
LA SENDA PIRENAICA
 About the Author
Since taking early retirement from his career as a physics and sports teacher,
Brian Johnson has found time for three through-hikes of the Pacific Crest Trail,
a 2700-mile round-Britain walk, eight hikes across the Pyrenees from the
Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a hike along the Via de la Plata from Seville to
Santiago and a single summer compleation of the Munros (Scotland’s 3000ft
mountains) as well as climbing all the Scottish 2000ft-plus mountains. He has
also completed a 2200-mile cycle tour of Spain and France and done multi-
week canoe tours in Sweden, France, Spain and Portugal.
In his younger days, Brian’s main sport was orienteering. He competed at
a high level and coached both Bishop Wordsworth’s School and South-West
Junior Orienteering Squads and has now been able to return to orienteering after
recovering from injury, and won the British Middle Distance Championships for
his age-group in 2017. He has walked and climbed extensively in summer and
winter conditions in Britain, the Alps, the Pyrenees and California, often leading
school groups.
As a fanatical sportsman and games player, Brian competed to a high level
in cricket, hockey, bridge and chess. His major achievement was winning the
1995/96 World Amateur Chess Championships.

Other Cicerone guides by the author

The Pacific Crest Trail
Walking the Corbetts Volume 1: South of the Great Glen
Walking the Corbetts Volume 2: North of the Great Glen
GR10 Trail: Through the French Pyrenees
 THE GR11 TRAIL
LA SENDA PIRENAICA
THE TRAVERSE OF THE SPANISH PYRENEES
by Brian Johnson

JUNIPER HOUSE, MURLEY MOSS,

OXENHOLME ROAD, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA9 7RL
www.cicerone.co.uk
© Brian Johnson 2018
Sixth edition 2018
ISBN: 978 1 85284 921 4

Fifth edition 2014

Fourth edition 2008
Third edition 2004
Second edition 2000
First edition 1996

Printed in China on behalf of Latitude Press Ltd

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All photographs are by the author.

Route mapping by Lovell Johns www.lovelljohns.com

Contains OpenStreetMap.org data © OpenStreetMap
contributors, CC-BY-SA. NASA relief data courtesy of ESRI

Updates to the Guide

While every effort is made by our authors to ensure the accuracy of guidebooks
as they go to print, changes can occur during the lifetime of an edition. Any
updates that we know of for this guide will be on the Cicerone website (www.
cicerone.co.uk/921/updates), so please check before planning your trip.
We also advise that you check information about such things as transport,
accommodation and shops locally. Even rights of way can be altered over time.
The route maps in this guide are derived from publicly available data,
databases and crowd-sourced data. As such they have not been through the
detailed checking procedures that would generally be applied to a published
map from an official mapping agency, although naturally we have reviewed them
closely in the light of local knowledge as part of the preparation of this guide.
We are always grateful for information about any discrepancies between
a guidebook and the facts on the ground, sent by email to updates@cicerone.
co.uk or by post to Cicerone, Juniper House, Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road,
Kendal, LA9 7RL United Kingdom.
Register your book: To sign up to receive free updates, special offers and
GPX files where available, register your book at www.cicerone.co.uk.

Front cover: Lac de Mar (recommended variation, Stage 23)

 CONTENTS

Map key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Overview map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Publisher’s dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Author’s preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
National and natural parks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
From the Atlantic to the Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The GR11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Weather and when to go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Wildlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Getting to the start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Getting home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Culture and language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Camping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Using this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

THE GR11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Getting to Cabo de Higuer from Irún . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Stage 1 Cabo de Higuer to Bera (Vera de Bidosoa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Stage 2 Bera to Elizondo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Stage 3 Elizondo to Puerto de Urkiago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Stage 4 Puerto de Urkiago to Burguete (Auritz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Stage 5 Burguete to Hiriberri (Villanueva de Aezkoa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Stage 6 Hiriberri to Ochagavía (Otsagabia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Stage 7 Ochagavía to Isaba (Izaba) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Stage 8 Isaba to Zuriza (over Peña Ezkaurri, GR11-4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Stage 9 Zuriza to La Mina. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Stage 9A Zuriza to Hotel Usón (Puen de Santana) (GR11-1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Stage 10 La Mina to Refugio de Lizara (GR11) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Stage 10A Hotel Usón to Refugio de Lizara (GR11-1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Stage 11 Refugio de Lizara to Candanchú . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Stage 12 Candanchú to Sallent de Gállego (Sallén de Galligo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Stage 13 Sallent de Gállego to Refugio de Respomuso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Stage 14 Refugio de Respomuso to Baños de Panticosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Stage 15 Baños de Panticosa to San Nicolás de Bujaruelo (Buxargüelo) . . . . . . 108
Stage 16 San Nicolás de Bujaruelo to Refugio de Góriz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Stage 17 Refugio de Góriz to Refugio de Pineta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Stage 18 Refugio de Pineta to Parzán . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Stage 19 Parzán to Refugio de Biadós (Viadós) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Stage 20 Refugio de Biadós to Puen de San Chaime (Puente de San Jaime) . . . 133
Stage 21 Puen de San Chaime to Refugio de Cap de Llauset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Stage 22 Refugio de Cap de Llauset to Refugi de Conangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Stage 23 Refugi de Conangles to Refugi dera Restanca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Stage 24 Refugi dera Restanca to Refugi de Colomèrs
(by Port de Caldes, GR11-18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Stage 25 Refugi de Colomèrs to Espot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Stage 26 Espot to La Guingueta d’Àneu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Stage 27 La Guingueta d’Àneu to Estaon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Stage 28 Estaon to Tavascan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Stage 29 Tavascan to Àreu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Stage 30 Àreu to Refugi de Vallferrera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Stage 31 Refugi de Vallferrera to Refugi de Comapedrosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Stage 32 Refugi de Comapedrosa to Arans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Stage 33 Arans to Encamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Stage 34 Encamp to Refugio de l’Illa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Stage 35 Refugio de l’Illa to Refugi de Malniu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Stage 36 Refugi de Malniu to Puigcerdà . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Stage 37 Puigcerdà to Camping Can Fosses, Planoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Stage 38 Camping Can Fosses, Planoles to Núria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Stage 39 Núria to Setcases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Stage 40 Setcases to Beget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Stage 41 Beget to Sant Aniol d’Aguja . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Stage 42 Sant Aniol d’Aguja to Albanyà . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Stage 43 Albanyà to Maçanet de Cabrenys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Stage 44 Maçanet de Cabrenys to La Jonquera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Stage 45 La Jonquera to Els Vilars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Stage 46 Els Vilars to Llançà . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Stage 47 Llançà to Cap de Creus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Appendix A Route summary table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Appendix B Facilities table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Appendix C Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Appendix D Sources of information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
 Map key

Map Key

start of stage
end of stage
start/finish point
alternative start
alternative finish
GR11 featured route
GR11 alternative route
optional route
minor track or dirt road
minor track or path
railway
railway station
settlement
significant building
summit
accommodation
bothy (unmanned refuge)
campground
bar/restaurant
tourist information office
food shop
water
saddle/col

7
8
n
ea
Oc
FRANCE

ic
nt
Toulouse
la
At
Bayonne
Irún Hendaye
St-Jean-Pied- Pau
de-Port Tarbes Carcassonne Narbonne
San Sebastian Oloron-
Burguete Ste-Marie
Lourdes Foix
Pamplona Isaba
Latour-de-Carol Perpignan
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica

Candanchú Encamp Banyuls-

Canfranc Torla Espot sur-Mer
Benasque Puigcerdà Cap de
La Jonquera Creus
Jaca
ANDORRA Planoles Cadaqués

Huesca SPAIN Gerona

Zaragoza
Sea
an
ane

Lleida
rr
te

GR11 Barcelona
di

Railways Motorways e
M
National borders Selected cross-
Airports border routes
 PUBLISHER’S DEDICATION

Punta Gabedallo over Ibón d’Estanés (Stage 10)

This new GR11 guide is dedicated to the memory of Paul Lucia.

Paul pioneered La Senda and the Spanish Pyrenees for English-speaking trek-
kers nearly 20 years ago. Paul’s first edition came out in 1996 under the aegis of Walt
Unsworth, my predecessor as Publisher at Cicerone. New updated editions that I
worked on with Paul followed in 2000 and 2004, with a final posthumous edition in
2008, the proofs of which were checked by Paul’s son, P-J, and daughter, Anna.
Paul brought a lifetime’s precision to his passion for the Spanish side of the
Pyrenees, the result of which was a guide that Cicerone was proud to publish for many
years. Many trekkers have commented that Paul had very long legs and his timings
were referred to as ‘bold’ by some, ‘unattainable’ by others! I particularly remem-
ber well Paul’s frustration with the continual re-routing in Navarre, although he was
delighted to have an excuse to return to the route.
In the 2008 edition, P-J and Anna wrote: ‘If asked to describe our father, the word
“indomitable” invariably springs to mind. Dad’s exploits formed a thread of marvellous
adventure through our upbringing.’
My thanks to Christine Lucia for agreeing to let us build on Paul’s work, to Paul’s
family and the many Cicerone trekkers whose comments have helped the GR11 and
our guides to it go from strength to strength.

Jonathan Williams

9
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica

Mountain safety
Every mountain walk has its dangers, and those described in this
guidebook are no exception. All who walk or climb in the mountains should
recognise this and take responsibility for themselves and their companions
along the way. The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that
the information contained in this guide was correct when it went to press, but,
except for any liability that cannot be excluded by law, they cannot accept
responsibility for any loss, injury or inconvenience sustained by any person
using this book.

International Distress Signal (emergency only)

Six blasts on a whistle (and flashes with a torch after dark) spaced evenly for one
minute, followed by a minute’s pause. Repeat until an answer is received. The
response is three signals per minute followed by a minute’s pause.

Helicopter Rescue
The following signals are used to communicate with a helicopter:

Help needed: Help not needed:

raise both
HelpHelp arms
required:
required: raise
HelpHelponerequired:
not armrequired:
not
raiseraise
above both
headarms
both
to arms raise
above onehead,
raise arm
one above
arm above
extend
above
form headhead
aabove
‘Y’ to to head,head,
other extend
arm otherother
extend
downward
formform
a ‘V’a ‘V’ arm downward
arm downward

Emergency telephone numbers

(If telephoning from the UK, the dialling code for Spain is 0034)

Spain: The Guardia Civil (police) are responsible for

mountain rescue in Spain. Tel 112.
Andorra and France: Mountain rescue tel 112.

Note Mountain rescue can be very expensive – be adequately insured.

10
 AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Limestone outcrops, Sierra de Abodi (Stage 6)

The first Cicerone guide to the GR11 was published in 1996. At that time the route
was ill-defined with little waymarking; navigation was a serious problem and there was
much walking on tarmac and dirt roads. Constant changes and improvements in the
route kept Paul Lucia busy producing updates and his fourth edition was published in
2008. Since 2008 there have been major route changes to the GR11, especially in the
Basque Country and Navarre. Road walking has been reduced to a minimum, the route
has been well signed and waymarked and the GR11 has now developed into a magnif-
icent route through largely unspoilt and wild mountains. The author walked the main
route again in 2017 for this updated guide but has not walked all the alternative routes
since 2013. This update includes the new route between La Mina and Candanchu, the
only major change since 2013.
It is now possible to walk the GR11 without camping or using bothies and this
new guide is organised into 47 stages for the benefit of those who are using accom-
modation along the route. Walkers who, like the author, prefer wild camping in the
mountains will find much greater flexibility in their planning.

Brian Johnson

11
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica

Lac Redon and Lac Long (Stage 25)

12
 INTRODUCTION
Punta Chistau (Stage 20)
The Pyrenees is the mountain chain
which forms the border between France
and Spain, stretching over 400km from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean
Sea. The GR11, which stays on the
Spanish side of the border, provides a
very varied scenic route through mag-
nificent, often remote, high or deserted
mountains.
As the GR11 leaves the border town
of Irún on the Atlantic Coast, it follows
ridges on the gentle grassy and wooded
hills of the Basque Country and Navarre.
There is then a rapid transition into steep
limestone mountains, passing through
the world-renowned Ordesa Canyon
before the fantastic granite peaks of
the High Pyrenees are reached. The
High Pyrenees rise to over 3000m, with
snowfields surviving well into the sum-
mer and the remnants of the glaciers
which carved out the deep valleys. The
GR11 generally heads up these alpine
valleys before crossing a high pass and
descending into the next valley. These
rough, tough mountains continue into
Andorra. The mountains become gentler
once Andorra is passed but, surprisingly,
the highest point on the GR11 is reached
after the High Pyrenees are left behind.
As the Mediterranean is approached,
the GR11 follows a line of steep, rug-
ged, wooded hills to reach the sea at the
spectacular peninsula of Cap de Creus.
NATIONAL AND NATURAL PARKS
The GR11 passes through two national
parks and six natural parks:
• Parque Natural de Valles
Occidentales
• Parque Nacional de Ordesa y
Monte Perdido
• Parque Natural de Posets-Maladeta
13
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
• Parc Nacional d’Aigüestortes i
Estany de Sant Maurici
• Parc Natural Alt Pirineu
• Parc Natural Valls de Comapedrosa
• Parc Natural Val del Madriu
• Parc Natural Cap de Creus
The Valles Occidentales (western
valleys) of Aragón is predominantly
composed of limestone and is a rela-
tively gentle introduction to the tough
alpine terrain ahead of you.
Ordesa and Monte Perdido, a
UNESCO World Heritage site, is the
largest limestone massif in Western
Europe. The highest peak is Monte
Perdido (3355m) but it is the deep val-
leys, with thundering cascades and
waterfalls edged by towering limestone,
which attract the tourist.
Posets-Maladeta is a granite massif
containing half the 3000m summits in the
Pyrenees including Aneto (3404m), the
highest mountain in the Pyrenees. Highly
glaciated granite mountains provide
some of the most spectacular mountain
scenery in the world with thousands of
little sparkling lakes nestling in a land-
scape dominated by bare rock.
As you pass into Catalonia, you
pass through Aigüestortes and Sant
Maurici National Park, another magi-
cal granite massif, and then the Parc
Natural Alt Pirineu, the largest natural
park in Catalonia. Alt Pirineu continues
into Andorra as the Parc Natural Valls
de Comapedrosa. The Val del Madriu as
you leave Andorra is the final alpine sec-
tion, with more fine granite scenery.
The GR11 ends with the Parc
Natural Cap de Creus, which is a com-
plete contrast: a rocky dry region, with
almost no trees, on a peninsula sticking
out into the Mediterranean Sea.
14
FROM THE ATLANTIC
TO THE MEDITERRANEAN
There are three long-distance paths
along the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to
the Mediterranean:
• GR10
• High-level route (Haute Randonnée
Pyrénénne, HRP)
• GR11 (La Senda Pirenaica)
The oldest and most popular of
these routes is the GR10, which is
entirely in France. This well-waymarked
path is not so wild and rough as the
GR11 but it passes through equally
spectacular terrain. Frequent visits to
towns and villages means accommoda-
tion and supplies are not usually a prob-
lem. Staying to the north of the water-
shed, the GR10 has a much cooler and
cloudier climate than on the GR11.
The HRP, which passes through
France, Spain and Andorra, is not so
much a walk as a mountaineering expe-
dition. The route is not waymarked,
except where it coincides with other
routes, and you must expect to get
lost! There is a lot of very rough terrain,
including some very steep, possibly dan-
gerous descents, and a lot of snow can
be expected until late summer. Visits
to towns and villages are infrequent so
resupply is difficult and you will have to
camp most of the time. You will spend a
lot of time on high mountain ridges with
a serious risk of thunderstorms and even
fresh snow. The HRP is a daunting route
for the inexperienced but is a magnifi-
cent expedition for those with the right
experience.
The GR11 is a well-waymarked
path which passes through Spain and
Andorra. Like the HRP, it crosses many
high mountain passes where there are

boulderfields, scree and some easy
scrambling at about the maximum dif-
ficulty the inexperienced would want
when carrying a heavy rucksack. The
weather tends to be considerably sun-
nier and drier than on the GR10 and
thunderstorms are less of a problem than
on the HRP as you don’t spend long
periods on high ridges. Frequent visits
to towns and villages mean that resup-
ply isn’t much of a problem. Those who
prefer not to camp or bivouac will find
that a few of the days are rather long and
that some of the alternative routes fea-
tured in this guide will need to be taken.
There could be problems with snow in
early season, but not later in the sum-
mer. Although the GR11 stays much
higher than the GR10, there is actually
considerably less climb.
Col d’Angliós from Ibón d’Angliós (Stage 22)
The GR11
The GR11 is more difficult than the
GR10 and takes you into tougher terrain,
but they are both magnificent walks.
Unless you are an experienced moun-
taineer you should prefer the GR10 or
GR11 to the HRP.
THE GR11
The total route is about 820km long with
46,000m of ascent and is described here
in 47 stages. It can be seen as breaking
into three broad sections.
• The first 11 stages through the lower
and more verdant Basque Country
and Navarre, gradually climbing
into the higher mountains south
of Lescun before dropping to the
Puerto de Somport cross-Pyrenees
(Jaca–Pau) road. This section covers
15
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
about 210km, and includes some
long initial stages.
• The High Pyrenees section from
Candanchú through to Puigcerdà
to the E of Andorra is covered in
25 stages and 380km, taking in the
most remote and beautiful parts
of the mountains. Access to the
route, if needed, can be through
Torla, Benasque, Espot and Encamp
before reaching the busy main road/
rail access at Puigcerdà running
between Barcelona and Toulouse.
• The final section runs through
Catalonia from Puigcerdà to the
Mediterranean, and is described in
11 stages, covering about 230km.
It is here that the GR11 reaches
its highest point (2780m) before
crossing steep wooded terrain and
descending to the dry and probably
hot coast at Cap de Creus.
As well as these main access points,
at many places the route crosses smaller
mountain roads serving high villages,
generally well served by bus, allowing
the trekker to access or leave the route.
Most routes quickly reach main bus
and rail routes including the east/west
rail lines between Bilbao, Pamplona,
Zaragoza, Lleida and Barcelona in
Spain or Hendaye, Pau, Toulouse and
Perpignan in France.
Walkers with earlier editions of the
Cicerone guide to the GR11 or maps
should note that there was considerable
rerouting of the GR11 between 2008
and 2011 and a major reroute in 2017.
The GR11 doesn’t pass over many
summits, but suggestions are made for
climbing many of the easier peaks which
could be attempted while walking the
route. If you want to climb some of the
16
more difficult, higher peaks you should
ask for advice from the guardians of the
refuges.
It would be possible to walk the
GR11 from Mediterranean to Atlantic,
but this guide describes the route from
the Atlantic so that you have the prevail-
ing wind/rain on your back and have
time to acclimatise to the heat before
reaching the Mediterranean.
WEATHER AND WHEN TO GO
The Spanish south-facing slopes of the
Pyrenees are much sunnier and drier
than the French side and although you
can expect good weather, you should
be prepared for rain and thunderstorms.
The hills of the Basque Country and
Navarre have a reputation for mist and
spells of gentle rain, but the author has
known temperatures approaching 40°C.
The weather in the Central Pyrenees
is often hot and dry, but these are high
mountains and can be subject to ter-
rific thunderstorms. Thunderstorms in
high mountains are usually thought of as
being an afternoon phenomenon, but in
the Pyrenees the storms are often slow to
build up and can arrive in the evening or
even in the middle of the night! As the
Mediterranean is approached you are
reaching an arid region and can expect
hot sunny weather.
Summer snowfall is unusual, but the
author has experienced snow as low as
1500m on the GR11 in August. In 2012
there was hardly any snow on the high
passes when the author through-hiked
the GR11 with a mid-June start, and there
would have been no problem starting
in early June. However, a mid-June start
in 2013 was a serious mountaineering
 WeaTheR and When To Go

Vignemale from Barranco deros Batans in July

2012 (top), and then in July 2013 (Stage 14)

17
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
expedition and there was still significant
snow on the high passes well into August.
Snow conditions vary tremendously from
year to year. The inexperienced would be
advised to wait for late June or July before
setting off from Irún.
The best months to walk the GR11
are July, August and September, but if
you are only intending to walk the lower
sections of the GR11 in the Basque
Country, Navarre or Catalonia, you may
prefer May, June or October when the
weather will be cooler.
WILDLIFE
The Pyrenees are very popular with
birdwatchers. The mountains act as a
big barrier to migrating birds and in the
spring and autumn they funnel birds
along the Atlantic and Mediterranean
Chisagüés on the descent to Parzán (Stage 18)
18
coastlines and through the lower passes.
The casual birdwatcher will be most
impressed with the large number of
birds of prey.
The massive Griffon vulture, with a
wingspan of about 2.5m, will frequently
be seen soaring on the high ridges, while
the smaller Egyptian vulture, which is
distinctively coloured with a white body
and black-and-white wings, is also likely
to be seen. You may also see Europe’s
largest and rarest vulture, the lammer-
geier, which has a wingspan of up to
2.8m. The lammergeier feeds mainly on
bone marrow, which it gets at by drop-
ping bones from a great height to smash
on the rocks below. Golden, booted,
short-toed and Bonelli’s eagles may be
seen, too. Arguably, the most beautiful
bird you will see is the red kite, with its
deeply forked tail. You can also expect
 Wildlife

Clockwise from top L to centre: Edelweiss, Anemone narcissiflora,

Gentian, White Asphodel, Martagon Lily, Great Yellow Gentian,
Aquilegia vulgaris, Androsace villosa, Bracket fungus

19
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
You are bound to see –
or hear – a marmot!
to see black kites, buzzards and honey
buzzards as well as smaller birds of prey
such as the kestrel, peregrine falcon,
sparrowhawk and rarer birds such as the
goshawk and even a migrating osprey.
One species which seems to be
thriving is the alpine chough, which you
will see in large flocks. This member of
the crow family is all black except for
a yellow bill and red legs. Rarer small
birds to look out for are the wallcreeper,
crossbill, crested tit, red-backed shrike,
bullfinch and alpine accentor.
You are much less likely to see
some of the rare mammals which used
to frequent the Pyrenees. There are no
Pyrenean brown bears left on the Spanish
side of the border and the Pyrenean Ibex
20
seems to be extinct. Fortunately, you will
have frequent sightings of the chamois
(isard/izard) which was hunted to near
extinction for the production of chamois
leather, but has now made a remarkable
recovery with numbers increasing to
about 25,000. Other mammals you will
see include marmot, several species of
deer, fox, red squirrel and the reintro-
duced mouflon. There are badgers and
wild boar, although these are less likely
to be seen.
The most notable of these are the
marmots, which are large ground squir-
rels that live in burrows. You will cer-
tainly know they are present when you
hear their alarm signal, a loud whistle
which sends them scurrying back into
their burrows.
You are likely to see many reptiles
and amphibians including several spe-
cies of snake, lizard, toad, frog and the
dramatic fire salamander.
Pyrenean plant life is very diverse
with at least 160 species of flower
endemic to the Pyrenees, as well as
many species, such as edelweiss, which
will be familiar to those visiting the Alps.
GETTING TO THE START
Access to the GR11 will be by car,
coach, train or plane. (Useful websites
are given in Appendix D.)
By car
You could to drive down to Irún through
France or from Bilbao or Santander (by
ferry from Portsmouth or Plymouth with
Brittany Ferries) in northern Spain. You
will need to find somewhere to leave
your car and at the end of your walk you
could return to Irún by rail.

By coach
It is possible to reach the Pyrenees by
overnight coach from London (Victoria
Coach Station). National Express run
links to London and then Eurolines run
coaches throughout Europe. The most
convenient destinations for those walk-
ing the GR11 are Irún and Figueras.
Eurolines also operate services to
Bayonne, Orthez, Pau, Tarbes, San-
Gaudens, Toulouse and Perpignan in
northern France.
By rail
Paris can be reached by Eurostar. From
here SNCF run high-speed trains to
a variety of destinations including
Hendaye, Pau, Toulouse and Perpignan.
Although the GR11 is in Spain you
will probably find the rail links on the
French side of the Pyrenees are more
useful for those wanting to hike sections
of the GR11. You can connect with the
GR11 using SNCF services to Hendaye,
Candanchú (Col du Somport), Latour-
de-Carol or Cerbère.
Hendaye is the French border town
adjacent to Irún. From Pau you can
take a train to Bedous then SNCF bus
to Candanchú. From Toulouse there
are trains to Latour-de-Carol which is
only an hour’s walk from the GR11
at Puigcerdà. There are trains from
Perpignan to Cerbère and then fre-
quent trains crossing the border from
Cerbère to Llançà, on the GR11. There
is also a useful rail link from Perpignan
to Villefranche and on by narrow-gauge
railway (Train Jaune) to Latour-de-Carol
or a direct bus link from Perpignan to
Latour-de-Carol.
The main west–east line joins
Hendaye, Pau, Toulouse and Perpignan.
equipMenT
By plane
At the time of writing, Ryanair fly
from Stansted and some regional air-
ports in the UK to Biarritz, Lourdes,
Carcassonne, Perpignan, Gerona and
Barcelona. British Airways fly direct to
Toulouse and Barcelona. Air France
have flights from London to Pau and a
big choice of destinations if you fly via
Paris. Easyjet fly from London to Biarritz
and Bristol or London to Toulouse.
GETTING HOME
There is no public transport from Cap
de Creus. Your main option is to walk,
take a taxi or hitch a lift to Cadaqués,
which has now developed as a holiday
resort. There is a ‘tourist train’ from Cap
de Creus to Cadaques at about 1pm in
the main holiday season.
From Cadaqués there are frequent
buses to Figueras from where you can
get trains to Cerbère to connect to the
French rail network. There are also buses
to Barcelona and Barcelona Airport.
From Barcelona you could connect with
the French rail network by taking a train
to Puigcerdà (Latour-de-Carol).
If you have time to spare, the
author would recommend walking
back to Port de la Selva, exploring some
of the beaches on the Cap de Creus
peninsular, and then follow part of the
coastal path, the GR92, to Llançà or
even to Cerbère.
EQUIPMENT
This is a serious expedition so you
should have previous experience of
backpacking or long-distance walks
before attempting this fantastic route.
21
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
GR11 hikers at Coll de Tudela (Stage 29)
A few general points are made on equip-
ment here.
• Keep your load as light as possible.
If you don’t need it, don’t carry it!
• If you are using accommodation
you may still want to carry a light-
weight sleeping bag and camping
mat to enable you to bivouac if
necessary
• Your waterproofs should be able
to cope with thunderstorms in the
High Pyrenees or steady rain in the
Basque Country
• You should have sufficient clothing
to cope with sub-zero temperatures
• A sun-hat is strongly recommended
• Use plenty of sun-screen
• Shorts are preferred by most hikers
• Good quality walking shoes are the
best footwear. You could use light-
weight boots, but heavy boots aren’t
22
necessary. Trainers aren’t really
robust enough for the terrain. Make
sure you have a good tread on your
shoes or boots.
• As a minimum you should have
containers capable of carrying 4
litres of water, possibly with one
easily accessible water bottle and
the remaining capacity as water
bags
• It is recommended that you use two
walking poles to aid climbing, pro-
tect the knees on steep descents, to
provide stability when crossing
rough terrain, snowfields or moun-
tain streams and for protection from
dogs! If you are not carrying walk-
ing poles you may need an ice-axe
to cope with snow on the high
passes. Crampons may be needed
in early season in a high snow year.

CULTURE AND LANGUAGE
Spanish holidays
The main Spanish holiday season is from
about 15 July–20 August. During this
period all facilities will be open, but
accommodation could be fully booked,
especially at weekends.
Spanish siesta
You can expect shops to be open in
the morning, closed during the after-
noon and open again in the evening.
Typically, shops may be closed from 12
noon to 4 or 5pm. In larger towns they
are more likely to be open all day.
Languages
Although you may think you are walk-
ing through the ‘Spanish’ Pyrenees, the
locals won’t think of themselves primar-
ily as Spanish.
You are passing through Euskadi
(Basque Country), Navarra (Navarre),
Aragón, Andorra and Cataluña
(Catalonia). In the Basque Country and
the north of Navarre the main language
is Euskera (Basque) and in Catalonia it
is Catalán. It is less likely that you will
encounter Aragonés and Aranés, but you
will see the legacy of these languages in
Catalan flag, Molló
culTuRe and lanGuaGe
the confusion of place names. Spanish
(Castilian) will be an official language in
these provinces and you can expect all
the locals to speak Spanish as a second
language. English is now spoken much
more widely than it was in the 20th cen-
tury, especially by younger people, and
is gradually taking over from French as a
third language.
There is a lot of confusion with
place names in the Pyrenees, with
many different spellings. When Spain
was a centralised fascist state, Spanish
names were imposed on the provinces,
but with the coming of democracy, the
provinces have been able to show a
greater degree of independence and one
expression of this is the return to place
names in the local language. This means
that on maps and signposts names may
be given in Spanish, a local language, or
even in French.
Politics
When they were independent states,
the Basque Country and Catalonia
were much larger than at present and
included large chunks of the Pyrenees
which are now in France. They have a
great deal of autonomy and the inde-
pendence movements in both provinces
have a lot of support.
The Spanish Civil War had a dev-
astating effect on the people of the
Pyrenees and the effects can still be seen
today with the destruction or desertion of
many mountain villages. The Civil War
broke out in 1936 with a coup d’état by
reactionary elements in the army. The
position in the Pyrenees was particularly
complicated as there were not only the
Fascist and Republican armies, but also
independence movements among the
23
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
Catalans and the Basques. By the time
the Republicans were defeated in 1939
about 700,000 lives had been lost and
about 500,000 refugees had fled across
the Pyrenees into France.
Andorra
Although Andorra is not in the European
Union (EU), it uses the Euro. Be aware
that if you buy ‘duty free’ products,
you have not paid tax in an EU coun-
try and customs controls are in opera-
tion on road crossings to France or
Spain. Catalán is the official language of
Andorra, but English, French and Spanish
are widely spoken. Camping laws are the
same as in Spain: no daytime camping,
except with the landowner’s permission,
but you can bivouac (with or without
a tent) on uncultivated land away from
habitation. Fires are not permitted!
24
ACCOMMODATION
There is a wide range of accommodation
on the GR11.
• Paradors are luxurious and expen-
sive hotels
• Hotels vary greatly in quality and
cost but they would have all the
facilities you expect of an hotel in
Britain
• Hostals are basic hotels. Some will
just offer accommodation, but most
will also have a bar-restaurant (a
hostal is not a hostel).
• Pensions are rather like the British
guest house
• Casa Rural or Turisme Rural are
private houses offering accommo-
dation similar to the British bed &
breakfast
• Albergue are ‘youth hostels’, but as
in Britain they do take adults
Refugio de Biadós (Stages 19 and 20)

Pico Llena Cantal over Refugio de Respomuso (Stage 13)
• Manned Refugios or Refugi are
mountain huts which offer accom-
modation (possibly in communal
dormitories). They have a drink and
meals service, open to both resi-
dents and non-residents and most
provide packed lunches.
• Many campgrounds will have cab-
ins, normally called ‘bungalows’,
and some will have bunkhouse
accommodation
• Unmanned Refugios or Refugi are
open for the use of mountaineers
and walkers. They are equivalent to
the Scottish ‘bothy’. They range in
quality from purpose-built buildings
that are well maintained by moun-
taineering clubs, to buildings that
are no better than unmaintained
cow sheds.
The facilities described during the
course of each stage description are
summarised in a box at the end of each
accoMModaTion
stage, in route order, with full contact
details.
If desperate, ask at the bar-restau-
rant; they will often know locals who are
willing to offer accommodation outside
the official system.
Manned mountain refuges
Refuges vary greatly, but as a guideline
you can expect the following:
• Basic accommodation for walkers
and climbers
• Refuge hours and rules are designed
for walkers, not for late-night
drinkers
• You may be able to get a discount
if you are a member of an Alpine
Association
• People staying in refuges usually
book half board (supper, bed and
breakfast) or full board (half board
with the addition of a picnic bag
for lunch)
25
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
GR11 hiker above Estany de Monges (Stage 24)
• Some, but not all, refuges will have
self-catering facilities
• There are mattresses and blankets
in the dormitories but you need to
bring a sleeping bag or a sheet bag
• Some refuges are open all year and
others only during the summer.
Many will only be open at week-
ends in the spring or autumn and
some will open out of season if you
make a reservation.
• It is recommended that you make
reservations in high summer and at
weekends
• Refuges offer a bar and snack ser-
vice to walkers outside normal
mealtimes
• Refuges will normally have a room
which can be used as a bothy when
the refuge is closed
• Camping is not permitted in the
vicinity of most manned refuges
26
• Many of the refuges don’t have their
own website, but use a regional
website which operates central
booking (see Appendix D)
CAMPING
In this guide the American term camp-
ground has been used for commercial or
organised campsites, to distinguish them
for wilderness campsites.
Car-camping used to be widespread
alongside roads and dirt roads with visi-
tors setting up camps, often for weeks
at a time, in many of the most beauti-
ful places in the mountains or around
the coast. To prevent this, a law was
passed to ban wild camping and this
law is enforced by the police. As is
often the case laws have unintended
consequences and this law, intended
to prevent car-camping and the setting

up of long-term camps, also applied to
backpackers.
The compromise, in practice, is
that backpackers are allowed to bivouac
for one night, with or without a small
tent, well away from roads and habita-
tion. This exception to the law has been
defined in some areas such as in the
‘Parc Natural’ in Catalonia, where wild
camping is permitted between 8pm and
8am.
You should ask permission if you
want to camp near villages, in farm-
ers’ fields, or close to a refuge. There is
rarely any problem camping high in the
mountains but discretion should be used
when camping at lower levels. The daily
stages given in this guide are intended
for those using overnight accommoda-
tion. Those who are wild camping will
want to ignore these stages and camp
well away from the towns, villages and
refuges.
West summit, Tuca d’Angliós, from Estany Cap de Llauset (Stage 22)
caMpinG
If you are accustomed to always
camping beside water, you will often
have difficulty in finding a suitable
campsite, especially in the Basque
Country and eastern Catalonia. In the
High Pyrenees camping beside streams
often means you are sharing the grass
with cows and mosquitoes. If you are
prepared to camp away from water, you
have much more flexibility and you can
often find campsites with spectacular
views.
Suggestions have been made in this
guide as to the best campsites. These
will normally be places where camping
overnight is legal and with good grass
which will take a tent peg. The experi-
enced backpacker will find plenty of
other places to camp.
The author tends to camp as high
as possible. Not only is there magnifi-
cent scenery, it’s legal and there is less
chance of being disturbed. What is
27
The GR11 TRail – la Senda piRenaica
more, there are likely to be fewer cows,
better grass, and fewer mosquitos and
biting insects.
The three types of camping gas
commonly available are:
• The ones you pierce, referred to in
this guide as ‘original’ cylinders
• ‘Easy-clic’ resealable cylinders, the
main resealable system used in
Southern Europe
• Screw-on resealable cylinders, such
as manufactured by Coleman and
Primus; these are the most widely
used in Britain, Northern Europe
and the USA, and in this guide
have been called ‘Coleman-style’
gas cylinders
Where these are mentioned in the
text they were in stock when the author
passed through in 2013, but it cannot
be guaranteed that they will be in stock
when you pass through. ‘Coleman-style’
cylinders are becoming more read-
ily available, but the locals mainly use
the ‘original’ or ‘easy-clic’ cylinders
and these still have greater availability.
Liquid fuels are most likely to be avail-
able at the ferreteria (ironmongers),
but make sure you know what you are
buying!
WATER
Water can be a problem if the weather
is hot. When walking in temperatures of
25–30°C, you will need at least ½ litre
(1 pint) of water for each hour of walk-
ing, plus about 2 litres for a ‘dry’ camp,
(ie one without a source of water). This is
a guideline; actual needs will vary con-
siderably from person to person and will
depend on the temperature.
28
Most towns, villages and hamlets
in the Pyrenees have fountains with
untreated spring water. The locals and
most walkers will drink the water with-
out further treatment.
You will often find fountains or
‘piped’ water as you walk along the trail.
It should be obvious whether this water
comes from a spring or a surface stream.
Spring water is usually of a high quality
and can be drunk with confidence. You
should be more cautious about surface
streams, especially woodland streams or
streams in areas which are well stocked
with sheep or cattle.
Unless otherwise indicated, the
streams, springs and water-points men-
tioned in the text were running in dry
years, 2012 and 2017, and in 2013, a
wet year, on through-hikes starting from
Irún in mid-June. During snow melt
and in a wet year there will be far more
water sources, especially in the High
Pyrenees.
Swedish GR11 hiker
collecting water from
a stream (Stage 2)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
word ὥρα received the (Babylonian) significance of “hour”; prior to
that there was no exact subdivision of the day. In Babylon and Egypt
water-clocks and sun-dials were discovered in the very early stages,
yet in Athens it was left to Plato to introduce a practically useful form
of clepsydra, and this was merely a minor adjunct of everyday utility
which could not have influenced the Classical life-feeling in the
smallest degree.
It remains still to mention the corresponding difference, which is
very deep and has never yet been properly appreciated, between
Classical and modern mathematics. The former conceived of things
as they are, as magnitudes, timeless and purely present, and so it
proceeded to Euclidean geometry and mathematical statics,
rounding off its intellectual system with the theory of conic sections.
We conceive things as they become and behave, as function, and
this brought us to dynamics, analytical geometry and thence to the
Differential Calculus.[9] The modern theory of functions is the
imposing marshalling of this whole mass of thought. It is a bizarre,
but nevertheless psychologically exact, fact that the physics of the
Greeks—being statics and not dynamics—neither knew the use nor
felt the absence of the time-element, whereas we on the other hand
work in thousandths of a second. The one and only evolution-idea
that is timeless, ahistoric, is Aristotle’s entelechy.
This, then, is our task. We men of the Western Culture are, with
our historical sense, an exception and not a rule. World-history is our
world picture and not all mankind’s. Indian and Classical man formed
no image of a world in progress, and perhaps when in due course
the civilization of the West is extinguished, there will never again be
a Culture and a human type in which “world-history” is so potent a
form of the waking consciousness.
 VI
What, then, is world-history? Certainly, an ordered presentation of
the past, an inner postulate, the expression of a capacity for feeling
form. But a feeling for form, however definite, is not the same as
form itself. No doubt we feel world-history, experience it, and believe
that it is to be read just as a map is read. But, even to-day, it is only
forms of it that we know and not the form of it, which is the mirror-
image of our own inner life.
Everyone of course, if asked, would say that he saw the inward
form of History quite clearly and definitely. The illusion subsists
because no one has seriously reflected on it, still less conceived
doubts as to his own knowledge, for no one has the slightest notion
how wide a field for doubt there is. In fact, the lay-out of world-history
is an unproved and subjective notion that has been handed down
from generation to generation (not only of laymen but of professional
historians) and stands badly in need of a little of that scepticism
which from Galileo onward has regulated and deepened our inborn
ideas of nature.
Thanks to the subdivision of history into “Ancient,” “Mediæval” and
“Modern”—an incredibly jejune and meaningless scheme, which has,
however, entirely dominated our historical thinking—we have failed
to perceive the true position in the general history of higher mankind,
of the little part-world which has developed on West-European[10] soil
from the time of the German-Roman Empire, to judge of its relative
importance and above all to estimate its direction. The Cultures that
are to come will find it difficult to believe that the validity of such a
scheme with its simple rectilinear progression and its meaningless
proportions, becoming more and more preposterous with each
century, incapable of bringing into itself the new fields of history as
they successively come into the light of our knowledge, was, in spite
of all, never whole-heartedly attacked. The criticisms that it has long
been the fashion of historical researchers to level at the scheme
mean nothing; they have only obliterated the one existing plan
without substituting for it any other. To toy with phrases such as “the
Greek Middle Ages” or “Germanic antiquity” does not in the least
help us to form a clear and inwardly-convincing picture in which
China and Mexico, the empire of Axum and that of the Sassanids
have their proper places. And the expedient of shifting the initial
point of “modern history” from the Crusades to the Renaissance, or
from the Renaissance to the beginning of the 19th Century, only
goes to show that the scheme per se is regarded as unshakably
sound.
It is not only that the scheme circumscribes the area of history.
What is worse, it rigs the stage. The ground of West Europe is
treated as a steady pole, a unique patch chosen on the surface of
the sphere for no better reason, it seems, than because we live on it
—and great histories of millennial duration and mighty far-away
Cultures are made to revolve around this pole in all modesty. It is a
quaintly conceived system of sun and planets! We select a single bit
of ground as the natural centre of the historical system, and make it
the central sun. From it all the events of history receive their real
light, from it their importance is judged in perspective. But it is in our
own West-European conceit alone that this phantom “world-history,”
which a breath of scepticism would dissipate, is acted out.
We have to thank that conceit for the immense optical illusion
(become natural from long habit) whereby distant histories of
thousands of years, such as those of China and Egypt, are made to
shrink to the dimensions of mere episodes while in the
neighbourhood of our own position the decades since Luther, and
particularly since Napoleon, loom large as Brocken-spectres. We
know quite well that the slowness with which a high cloud or a
railway train in the distance seems to move is only apparent, yet we
believe that the tempo of all early Indian, Babylonian or Egyptian
history was really slower than that of our own recent past. And we
think of them as less substantial, more damped-down, more diluted,
because we have not learned to make the allowance for (inward and
outward) distances.
It is self-evident that for the Cultures of the West the existence of
Athens, Florence or Paris is more important than that of Lo-Yang or
Pataliputra. But is it permissible to found a scheme of world-history
on estimates of such a sort? If so, then the Chinese historian is quite
entitled to frame a world-history in which the Crusades, the
Renaissance, Cæsar and Frederick the Great are passed over in
silence as insignificant. How, from the morphological point of view,
should our 18th Century be more important than any other of the
sixty centuries that preceded it? Is it not ridiculous to oppose a
“modern” history of a few centuries, and that history to all intents
localized in West Europe, to an “ancient” history which covers as
many millennia—incidentally dumping into that “ancient history” the
whole mass of the pre-Hellenic cultures, unprobed and unordered,
as mere appendix-matter? This is no exaggeration. Do we not, for
the sake of keeping the hoary scheme, dispose of Egypt and
Babylon—each as an individual and self-contained history quite
equal in the balance to our so-called “world-history” from
Charlemagne to the World-War and well beyond it—as a prelude to
classical history? Do we not relegate the vast complexes of Indian
and Chinese culture to foot-notes, with a gesture of embarrassment?
As for the great American cultures, do we not, on the ground that
they do not “fit in” (with what?), entirely ignore them?
The most appropriate designation for this current West-European
scheme of history, in which the great Cultures are made to follow
orbits round us as the presumed centre of all world-happenings, is
the Ptolemaic system of history. The system that is put forward in
this work in place of it I regard as the Copernican discovery in the
historical sphere, in that it admits no sort of privileged position to the
Classical or the Western Culture as against the Cultures of India,
Babylon, China, Egypt, the Arabs, Mexico—separate worlds of
dynamic being which in point of mass count for just as much in the
general picture of history as the Classical, while frequently
surpassing it in point of spiritual greatness and soaring power.
 VII
The scheme “ancient-mediæval-modern” in its first form was a
creation of the Magian world-sense. It first appeared in the Persian
and Jewish religions after Cyrus,[11] received an apocalyptic sense in
the teaching of the Book of Daniel on the four world-eras, and was
developed into a world-history in the post-Christian religions of the
East, notably the Gnostic systems.[12]
This important conception, within the very narrow limits which fixed
its intellectual basis, was unimpeachable. Neither Indian nor even
Egyptian history was included in the scope of the proposition. For the
Magian thinker the expression “world-history” meant a unique and
supremely dramatic act, having as its theatre the lands between
Hellas and Persia, in which the strictly dualistic world-sense of the
East expressed itself not by means of polar conceptions like the
“soul and spirit,” “good and evil” of contemporary metaphysics, but
by the figure of a catastrophe, an epochal change of phase between
world-creation and world-decay.[13]
No elements beyond those which we find stabilized in the
Classical literature, on the one hand, and the Bible (or other sacred
book of the particular system), on the other, came into the picture,
which presents (as “The Old” and “The New,” respectively) the
easily-grasped contrasts of Gentile and Jewish, Christian and
Heathen, Classical and Oriental, idol and dogma, nature and spirit
with a time connotation—that is, as a drama in which the one
prevails over the other. The historical change of period wears the
characteristic dress of the religious “Redemption.” This “world-
history” in short was a conception narrow and provincial, but within
its limits logical and complete. Necessarily, therefore, it was specific
to this region and this humanity, and incapable of any natural
extension.
But to these two there has been added a third epoch, the epoch
that we call “modern,” on Western soil, and it is this that for the first
time gives the picture of history the look of a progression. The
oriental picture was at rest. It presented a self-contained antithesis,
with equilibrium as its outcome and a unique divine act as its turning-
point. But, adopted and assumed by a wholly new type of mankind, it
was quickly transformed (without anyone’s noticing the oddity of the
change) into a conception of a linear progress: from Homer or Adam
—the modern can substitute for these names the Indo-German, Old
Stone Man, or the Pithecanthropus—through Jerusalem, Rome,
Florence and Paris according to the taste of the individual historian,
thinker or artist, who has unlimited freedom in the interpretation of
the three-part scheme.
This third term, “modern times,” which in form asserts that it is the
last and conclusive term of the series, has in fact, ever since the
Crusades, been stretched and stretched again to the elastic limit at
which it will bear no more.[14] It was at least implied if not stated in so
many words, that here, beyond the ancient and the mediæval,
something definitive was beginning, a Third Kingdom in which,
somewhere, there was to be fulfilment and culmination, and which
had an objective point.
As to what this objective point is, each thinker, from Schoolman to
present-day Socialist, backs his own peculiar discovery. Such a view
into the course of things may be both easy and flattering to the
patentee, but in fact he has simply taken the spirit of the West, as
reflected in his own brain, for the meaning of the world. So it is that
great thinkers, making a metaphysical virtue of intellectual necessity,
have not only accepted without serious investigation the scheme of
history agreed “by common consent” but have made of it the basis of
their philosophies and dragged in God as author of this or that
“world-plan.” Evidently the mystic number three applied to the world-
ages has something highly seductive for the metaphysician’s taste.
History was described by Herder as the education of the human
race, by Kant as an evolution of the idea of freedom, by Hegel as a
self-expansion of the world-spirit, by others in other terms, but as
regards its ground-plan everyone was quite satisfied when he had
thought out some abstract meaning for the conventional threefold
order.
On the very threshold of the Western Culture we meet the great
Joachim of Floris (c. 1145-1202),[15] the first thinker of the Hegelian
stamp who shattered the dualistic world-form of Augustine, and with
his essentially Gothic intellect stated the new Christianity of his time
in the form of a third term to the religions of the Old and the New
Testaments, expressing them respectively as the Age of the Father,
the Age of the Son and the Age of the Holy Ghost. His teaching
moved the best of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, Dante,
Thomas Aquinas, in their inmost souls and awakened a world-
outlook which slowly but surely took entire possession of the
historical sense of our Culture. Lessing—who often designated his
own period, with reference to the Classical as the “after-world”[16]
(Nachwelt)—took his idea of the “education of the human race” with
its three stages of child, youth and man, from the teaching of the
Fourteenth Century mystics. Ibsen treats it with thoroughness in his
Emperor and Galilean (1873), in which he directly presents the
Gnostic world-conception through the figure of the wizard Maximus,
and advances not a step beyond it in his famous Stockholm address
of 1887. It would appear, then, that the Western consciousness feels
itself urged to predicate a sort of finality inherent in its own
appearance.
But the creation of the Abbot of Floris was a mystical glance into
the secrets of the divine world-order. It was bound to lose all
meaning as soon as it was used in the way of reasoning and made a
hypothesis of scientific thinking, as it has been—ever more and more
frequently—since the 17th Century.
It is a quite indefensible method of presenting world-history to
begin by giving rein to one’s own religious, political or social
convictions and endowing the sacrosanct three-phase system with
tendencies that will bring it exactly to one’s own standpoint. This is,
in effect, making of some formula—say, the “Age of Reason,”
Humanity, the greatest happiness of the greatest number,
enlightenment, economic progress, national freedom, the conquest
of nature, or world-peace—a criterion whereby to judge whole
millennia of history. And so we judge that they were ignorant of the
“true path,” or that they failed to follow it, when the fact is simply that
their will and purposes were not the same as ours. Goethe’s saying,
“What is important in life is life and not a result of life,” is the answer
to any and every senseless attempt to solve the riddle of historical
form by means of a programme.
It is the same picture that we find when we turn to the historians of
each special art or science (and those of national economics and
philosophy as well). We find:
“Painting” from the Egyptians (or the cave-men) to the
Impressionists, or
“Music” from Homer to Bayreuth and beyond, or
“Social Organization” from Lake Dwellings to Socialism, as
the case may
be,
presented as a linear graph which steadily rises in conformity with
the values of the (selected) arguments. No one has seriously
considered the possibility that arts may have an allotted span of life
and may be attached as forms of self-expression to particular
regions and particular types of mankind, and that therefore the total
history of an art may be merely an additive compilation of separate
developments, of special arts, with no bond of union save the name
and some details of craft-technique.
We know it to be true of every organism that the rhythm, form and
duration of its life, and all the expression-details of that life as well,
are determined by the properties of its species. No one, looking at
the oak, with its millennial life, dare say that it is at this moment, now,
about to start on its true and proper course. No one as he sees a
caterpillar grow day by day expects that it will go on doing so for two
or three years. In these cases we feel, with an unqualified certainty,
a limit, and this sense of the limit is identical with our sense of the
inward form. In the case of higher human history, on the contrary, we
take our ideas as to the course of the future from an unbridled
optimism that sets at naught all historical, i.e., organic, experience,
and everyone therefore sets himself to discover in the accidental
present terms that he can expand into some striking progression-
series, the existence of which rests not on scientific proof but on
predilection. He works upon unlimited possibilities—never a natural
end—and from the momentary top-course of his bricks plans
artlessly the continuation of his structure.
 “Mankind,” however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than
the family of butterflies or orchids. “Mankind” is a zoological
expression, or an empty word.[17] But conjure away the phantom,
break the magic circle, and at once there emerges an astonishing
wealth of actual forms—the Living with all its immense fullness,
depth and movement—hitherto veiled by a catchword, a dryasdust
scheme, and a set of personal “ideals.” I see, in place of that empty
figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting
one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a
number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength
from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound
throughout its whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its
mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own
passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own death. Here indeed are
colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet
discovered. Here the Cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods,
landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and the stone-pines, the
blossoms, twigs and leaves—but there is no ageing “Mankind.” Each
Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise,
ripen, decay, and never return. There is not one sculpture, one
painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in its
deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration
and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar
blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline. These
cultures, sublimated life-essences, grow with the same superb
aimlessness as the flowers of the field. They belong, like the plants
and the animals, to the living Nature of Goethe, and not to the dead
Nature of Newton. I see world-history as a picture of endless
formations and transformations, of the marvellous waxing and
waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the contrary,
sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding on to itself one
epoch after another.
But the series “ancient-mediæval-modern history” has at last
exhausted its usefulness. Angular, narrow, shallow though it was as
a scientific foundation, still we possessed no other form that was not
wholly unphilosophical in which our data could be arranged, and
world-history (as hitherto understood) has to thank it for filtering our
classifiable solid residues. But the number of centuries that the
scheme can by any stretch be made to cover has long since been
exceeded, and with the rapid increase in the volume of our historical
material—especially of material that cannot possibly be brought
under the scheme—the picture is beginning to dissolve into a chaotic
blur. Every historical student who is not quite blind knows and feels
this, and it is as a drowning man that he clutches at the only scheme
which he knows of. The word “Middle Age,”[18] invented in 1667 by
Professor Horn of Leyden, has to-day to cover a formless and
constantly extending mass which can only be defined, negatively, as
every thing not classifiable under any pretext in one of the other two
(tolerably well-ordered) groups. We have an excellent example of
this in our feeble treatment and hesitant judgment of modern
Persian, Arabian and Russian history. But, above all, it has become
impossible to conceal the fact that this so-called history of the world
is a limited history, first of the Eastern Mediterranean region and
then,—with an abrupt change of scene at the Migrations (an event
important only to us and therefore greatly exaggerated by us, an
event of purely Western and not even Arabian significance),—of
West-Central Europe. When Hegel declared so naïvely that he
meant to ignore those peoples which did not fit into his scheme of
history, he was only making an honest avowal of methodic
premisses that every historian finds necessary for his purpose and
every historical work shows in its lay-out. In fact it has now become
an affair of scientific tact to determine which of the historical
developments shall be seriously taken into account and which not.
Ranke is a good example.
 VIII
To-day we think in continents, and it is only our philosophers and
historians who have not realized that we do so. Of what significance
to us, then, are conceptions and purviews that they put before us as
universally valid, when in truth their furthest horizon does not extend
beyond the intellectual atmosphere of Western Man?
Examine, from this point of view, our best books. When Plato
speaks of humanity, he means the Hellenes in contrast to the
barbarians, which is entirely consonant with the ahistoric mode of the
Classical life and thought, and his premisses take him to conclusions
that for Greeks were complete and significant. When, however, Kant
philosophizes, say on ethical ideas, he maintains the validity of his
theses for men of all times and places. He does not say this in so
many words, for, for himself and his readers, it is something that
goes without saying. In his æsthetics he formulates the principles,
not of Phidias’s art, or Rembrandt’s art, but of Art generally. But what
he poses as necessary forms of thought are in reality only necessary
forms of Western thought, though a glance at Aristotle and his
essentially different conclusions should have sufficed to show that
Aristotle’s intellect, not less penetrating than his own, was of different
structure from it. The categories of the Westerner are just as alien to
Russian thought as those of the Chinaman or the ancient Greek are
to him. For us, the effective and complete comprehension of
Classical root-words is just as impossible as that of Russian[19] and
Indian, and for the modern Chinese or Arab, with their utterly
different intellectual constitutions, “philosophy from Bacon to Kant”
has only a curiosity-value.
It is this that is lacking to the Western thinker, the very thinker in
whom we might have expected to find it—insight into the historically
relative character of his data, which are expressions of one specific
existence and one only; knowledge of the necessary limits of their
validity; the conviction that his “unshakable” truths and “eternal”
views are simply true for him and eternal for his world-view; the duty
of looking beyond them to find out what the men of other Cultures
have with equal certainty evolved out of themselves. That and
nothing else will impart completeness to the philosophy of the future,
and only through an understanding of the living world shall we
understand the symbolism of history. Here there is nothing constant,
nothing universal. We must cease to speak of the forms of
“Thought,” the principles of “Tragedy,” the mission of “The State.”
Universal validity involves always the fallacy of arguing from
particular to particular.
But something much more disquieting than a logical fallacy begins
to appear when the centre of gravity of philosophy shifts from the
abstract-systematic to the practical-ethical and our Western thinkers
from Schopenhauer onward turn from the problem of cognition to the
problem of life (the will to life, to power, to action). Here it is not the
ideal abstract “man” of Kant that is subjected to examination, but
actual man as he has inhabited the earth during historical time,
grouped, whether primitive or advanced, by peoples; and it is more
than ever futile to define the structure of his highest ideas in terms of
the “ancient-mediæval-modern” scheme with its local limitations. But
it is done, nevertheless.
Consider the historical horizon of Nietzsche. His conceptions of
decadence, militarism, the transvaluation of all values, the will to
power, lie deep in the essence of Western civilization and are for the
analysis of that civilization of decisive importance. But what, do we
find, was the foundation on which he built up his creation? Romans
and Greeks, Renaissance and European present, with a fleeting and
uncomprehending side-glance at Indian philosophy—in short
“ancient, mediæval and modern” history. Strictly speaking, he never
once moved outside the scheme, not did any other thinker of his
time.
What correlation, then, is there or can there be of his idea of the
“Dionysian” with the inner life of a highly-civilized Chinese or an up-
to-date American? What is the significance of his type of the
“Superman”—for the world of Islam? Can image-forming antitheses
of Nature and Intellect, Heathen and Christian, Classical and
Modern, have any meaning for the soul of the Indian or the Russian?
What can Tolstoi—who from the depths of his humanity rejected the
whole Western world-idea as something alien and distant—do with
the “Middle Ages,” with Dante, with Luther? What can a Japanese do
with Parzeval and “Zarathustra,” or an Indian with Sophocles? And is
the thought-range of Schopenhauer, Comte, Feuerbach, Hebbel or
Strindberg any wider? Is not their whole psychology, for all its
intention of world-wide validity, one of purely West-European
significance?
How comic seem Ibsen’s woman-problems—which also challenge
the attention of all “humanity”—when, for his famous Nora, the lady
of the North-west European city with the horizon that is implied by a
house-rent of £100 to £300 a year and a Protestant upbringing, we
substitute Cæsar’s wife, Madame de Sévigné, a Japanese or a
Turkish peasant woman! But, for that matter, Ibsen’s own circle of
vision is that of the middle class in a great city of yesterday and to-
day. His conflicts, which start from spiritual premisses that did not
exist till about 1850 and can scarcely last beyond 1950, are neither
those of the great world nor those of the lower masses, still less
those of the cities inhabited by non-European populations.
All these are local and temporary values—most of them indeed
limited to the momentary “intelligentsia” of cities of West-European
type. World-historical or “eternal” values they emphatically are not.
Whatever the substantial importance of Ibsen’s and Nietzsche’s
generation may be, it infringes the very meaning of the word “world-
history”—which denotes the totality and not a selected part—to
subordinate, to undervalue, or to ignore the factors which lie outside
“modern” interests. Yet in fact they are so undervalued or ignored to
an amazing extent. What the West has said and thought, hitherto, on
the problems of space, time, motion, number, will, marriage,
property, tragedy, science, has remained narrow and dubious,
because men were always looking for the solution of the question. It
was never seen that many questioners implies many answers, that
any philosophical question is really a veiled desire to get an explicit
affirmation of what is implicit in the question itself, that the great
questions of any period are fluid beyond all conception, and that
therefore it is only by obtaining a group of historically limited
solutions and measuring it by utterly impersonal criteria that the final
secrets can be reached. The real student of mankind treats no
standpoint as absolutely right or absolutely wrong. In the face of
such grave problems as that of Time or that of Marriage, it is
insufficient to appeal to personal experience, or an inner voice, or
reason, or the opinion of ancestors or contemporaries. These may
say what is true for the questioner himself and for his time, but that is
not all. In other Cultures the phenomenon talks a different language,
for other men there are different truths. The thinker must admit the
validity of all, or of none.
How greatly, then, Western world-criticism can be widened and
deepened! How immensely far beyond the innocent relativism of
Nietzsche and his generation one must look—how fine one’s sense
for form and one’s psychological insight must become—how
completely one must free oneself from limitations of self, of practical
interests, of horizon—before one dare assert the pretension to
understand world-history, the world-as-history.
 IX
In opposition to all these arbitrary and narrow schemes, derived
from tradition or personal choice, into which history is forced, I put
forward the natural, the “Copernican,” form of the historical process
which lies deep in the essence of that process and reveals itself only
to an eye perfectly free from prepossessions.
Such an eye was Goethe’s. That which Goethe called Living
Nature is exactly that which we are calling here world-history, world-
as-history. Goethe, who as artist portrayed the life and development,
always the life and development, of his figures, the thing-becoming
and not the thing-become (“Wilhelm Meister” and “Wahrheit und
Dichtung”) hated Mathematics. For him, the world-as-mechanism
stood opposed to the world-as-organism, dead nature to living
nature, law to form. As naturalist, every line he wrote was meant to
display the image of a thing-becoming, the “impressed form” living
and developing. Sympathy, observation, comparison, immediate and
inward certainty, intellectual flair—these were the means whereby he
was enabled to approach the secrets of the phenomenal world in
motion. Now these are the means of historical research—precisely
these and no others. It was this godlike insight that prompted him to
say at the bivouac fire on the evening of the Battle of Valmy: “Here
and now begins a new epoch of world history, and you, gentlemen,
can say that you ‘were there.’” No general, no diplomat, let alone the
philosophers, ever so directly felt history “becoming.” It is the
deepest judgment that any man ever uttered about a great historical
act in the moment of its accomplishment.
And just as he followed out the development of the plant-form from
the leaf, the birth of the vertebrate type, the process of the geological
strata—the Destiny in nature and not the Causality—so here we
shall develop the form-language of human history, its periodic
structure, its organic logic out of the profusion of all the challenging
details.
 In other aspects, mankind is habitually, and rightly, reckoned as
one of the organisms of the earth’s surface. Its physical structure, its
natural functions, the whole phenomenal conception of it, all belong
to a more comprehensive unity. Only in this aspect is it treated
otherwise, despite that deeply-felt relationship of plant destiny and
human destiny which is an eternal theme of all lyrical poetry, and
despite that similarity of human history to that of any other of the
higher life-groups which is the refrain of endless beast-legends,
sagas and fables.
But only bring analogy to bear on this aspect as on the rest, letting
the world of human Cultures intimately and unreservedly work upon
the imagination instead of forcing it into a ready-made scheme. Let
the words youth, growth, maturity, decay—hitherto, and to-day more
than ever, used to express subjective valuations and entirely
personal preferences in sociology, ethics and æsthetics—be taken at
last as objective descriptions of organic states. Set forth the
Classical Culture as a self-contained phenomenon embodying and
expressing the Classical soul, put it beside the Egyptian, the Indian,
the Babylonian, the Chinese and the Western, and determine for
each of these higher individuals what is typical in their surgings and
what is necessary in the riot of incident. And then at last will unfold
itself the picture of world-history that is natural to us, men of the
West, and to us alone.
 X
Our narrower task, then, is primarily to determine, from such a
world-survey, the state of West Europe and America as at the epoch
of 1800-2000—to establish the chronological position of this period
in the ensemble of Western culture-history, its significance as a
chapter that is in one or other guise necessarily found in the
biography of every Culture, and the organic and symbolic meaning of
its political, artistic, intellectual and social expression-forms.
Considered in the spirit of analogy, this period appears as
chronologically parallel—“contemporary” in our special sense—with
the phase of Hellenism, and its present culmination, marked by the
World-War, corresponds with the transition from the Hellenistic to the
Roman age. Rome, with its rigorous realism—uninspired, barbaric,
disciplined, practical, Protestant, Prussian—will always give us,
working as we must by analogies, the key to understanding our own
future. The break of destiny that we express by hyphening the words
“Greeks = Romans” is occurring for us also, separating that which is
already fulfilled from that which is to come. Long ago we might and
should have seen in the “Classical” world a development which is the
complete counterpart of our own Western development, differing
indeed from it in every detail of the surface but entirely similar as
regards the inward power driving the great organism towards its end.
We might have found the constant alter ego of our own actuality in
establishing the correspondence, item by item, from the “Trojan War”
and the Crusades, Homer and the Nibelungenlied, through Doric and
Gothic, Dionysian movement and Renaissance, Polycletus and John
Sebastian Bach, Athens and Paris, Aristotle and Kant, Alexander
and Napoleon, to the world-city and the imperialism common to both
Cultures.
Unfortunately, this requires an interpretation of the picture of
Classical history very different from the incredibly one-sided,
superficial, prejudiced, limited picture that we have in fact given to it.
We have, in truth been only too conscious of our near relation to the
Classical Age, and only too prone in consequence to unconsidered
assertion of it. Superficial similarity is a great snare, and our entire
Classical study fell a victim to it as soon as it passed from the
(admittedly masterly) ordering and critique of the discoveries to the
interpretation of their spiritual meaning. That close inward relation in
which we conceive ourselves to stand towards the Classical, and
which leads us to think that we are its pupils and successors
(whereas in reality we are simply its adorers), is a venerable
prejudice which ought at last to be put aside. The whole religious-
philosophical, art-historical and social-critical work of the 19th
Century has been necessary to enable us, not to understand
Æschylus, Plato, Apollo and Dionysus, the Athenian state and
Cæsarism (which we are far indeed from doing), but to begin to
realize, once and for all, how immeasurably alien and distant these
things are from our inner selves—more alien, maybe, than Mexican
gods and Indian architecture.
Our views of the Græco-Roman Culture have always swung
between two extremes, and our standpoints have invariably been
defined for us by the “ancient-mediæval-modern” scheme. One
group, public men before all else—economists, politicians, jurists—
opine that “present-day mankind” is making excellent progress,
assess it and its performances at the very highest value and
measure everything earlier by its standards. There is no modern
party that has not weighed up Cleon, Marius, Themistocles, Catiline,
the Gracchi, according to its own principles. On the other hand we
have the group of artists, poets, philologists and philosophers. These
feel themselves to be out of their element in the aforesaid present,
and in consequence choose for themselves in this or that past epoch
a standpoint that is in its way just as absolute and dogmatic from
which to condemn “to-day.” The one group looks upon Greece as a
“not yet,” the other upon modernity as a “nevermore.” Both labour
under the obsession of a scheme of history which treats the two
epochs as part of the same straight line.
In this opposition it is the two souls of Faust that express
themselves. The danger of the one group lies in a clever
superficiality. In its hands there remains finally, of all Classical
Culture, of all reflections of the Classical soul, nothing but a bundle
of social, economic, political and physiological facts, and the rest is
treated as “secondary results,” “reflexes,” “attendant phenomena.” In
the books of this group we find not a hint of the mythical force of
Æschylus’s choruses, of the immense mother-earth struggle of the
early sculpture, the Doric column, of the richness of the Apollo-cult,
of the real depth of the Roman Emperor-worship. The other group,
composed above all of belated romanticists—represented in recent
times by the three Basel professors Bachofen, Burckhardt and
Nietzsche—succumb to the usual dangers of ideology. They lose
themselves in the clouds of an antiquity that is really no more than
the image of their own sensibility in a philological mirror. They rest
their case upon the only evidence which they consider worthy to
support it, viz., the relics of the old literature, yet there never was a
Culture so incompletely represented for us by its great writers.[20] The
first group, on the other hand, supports itself principally upon the
humdrum material of law-sources, inscriptions and coins (which
Burckhardt and Nietzsche, very much to their own loss, despised)
and subordinates thereto, often with little or no sense of truth and
fact, the surviving literature. Consequently, even in point of critical
foundations, neither group takes the other seriously. I have never
heard that Nietzsche and Mommsen had the smallest respect for
each other.
But neither group has attained to that higher method of treatment
which reduces this opposition of criteria to ashes, although it was
within their power to do so. In their self-limitation they paid the
penalty for taking over the causality-principle from natural science.
Unconsciously they arrived at a pragmatism that sketchily copied the
world-picture drawn by physics and, instead of revealing, obscured
and confused the quite other-natured forms of history. They had no
better expedient for subjecting the mass of historical material to
critical and normative examination than to consider one complex of
phenomena as being primary and causative and the rest as being
secondary, as being consequences or effects. And it was not only
the matter-of-fact school that resorted to this method. The
romanticists did likewise, for History had not revealed even to their
dreaming gaze its specific logic; and yet they felt that there was an
immanent necessity in it to determine this somehow, rather than turn
their backs upon History in despair like Schopenhauer.