On the Use of Natural Law 61 on history was necessary, it was not the task of the historian to pass it; this was left to the reader.^^ On the one hand, the historian as a spokesman of the prince should show the way to such a judgment and, on the other, truth demanded that this was not to be confused with general principles. These appeared in the actual interests of the state, but only the individual reader could apply them.^^ Pufendorf admitted to this double standard, something that was instrumental in his creation of an autonomous field of learning from deductive, logically conceived history. Thus, according to this view, Pufendorf was not even theoretically impartial as a historian. So far, researchers agree that Pufendorf was aware that the historian had more than one duty, that these were Incompatible, and that this could either lead to his being objective, in the sense of being impartial, or to his not being so. Denzer has insisted that this whole line of reasoning is anachronistic and the wrong way to put the question. The modern concept of objectivity did not exist in the 17th century. Thus there is no contradiction between the search for objectivity and the idea that history is part of the general principles of natural law. Instead, Pufendorf had a political purpose in the old sense of the word. His questions are about how, according to natural law, a state should be governed to satisfy the demand for political community and about how the actual political actions in an actual situation may be shaped to suit the object of the state. This is not modern historical scholarship. The care for the well-being of the state could lead Pufendorf to make a particular selection of data in his writings.'*® A highly relevant question, then is how Pufendorf actually wrote his books. Here, too, opinions sharply differ and they point in part to theoretical reflections, such as those referred to above. According to one view, a comparison between the history of Charles Gustavus and the history of Frederick WilliamIII, both belonging to Pufendorf’s later writings and thus having had a similar theoretical background, shows that it is not possible to identify conflicting bias. Furthermore, one cannot find the least suggestion that the protagonist’s political opponent was given anything but a less than flattering image by Pufendorf.'*' Not surprisingly, this has been viewed against the background of Pufendorf’s personal circumstances at the time, the late 1680s. He was then engaged in negotiation on the printing of Charles Gustavus at the same time ibid, p 194 f. '” loc. cit. ibid, p 189 f. Denzer p 251 ff. Salzer p 2 f.
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