Well I finally got to the end of the Simkhovitch essay, again.
From the conclusion of Rome's Fall Reconsidered :
But it is a mistake to think that social science is dealing with life. It is not. It deals with the background of life. It deals with common things, with what lives had in common, common conditions of existence, common purposes that these conditions suggest. They can and must be scientifically explained and determined, if social science is to be taken seriously.
Scientific determination is accurate determination. What forces that circumscribe and govern our life must we unquestionably accept? Obviously, the physical forces. Under certain conditions we are born, we live and die. The limits of our mortal existence we cannot transgress. Nor can we change the heavenly course of suns and planets; we do not govern the seasons of the year; they regulate our life.
Within the laws of nature our lives begin and end. They limit and compass our existence. But the laws of nature without our active participation do neither feed nor clothe us. This active participation we call our work, our labor. Social labor varies in its productivity. At all times this productivity had and has its limits. These limits of the productivity of our labor become, for society, physical conditions of existence. Within these limits our entire social life must move. These limits life must accept as mandatory and implacable; to them it must adjust itself.
The history of the productivity of our labor is the foundation of a scientific economic history, and the backbone of any and all history. Every law, every statute, every institution has obviously some purpose. But how are we to understand the purposes of the past if we know not the conditions which those purposes were to meet? The accurate knowledge of the productivity of our labor can explain to us why things were as they were, why they became what they are and what one may expect from the future.
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RE: "Conditions"
From The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire by M. Rostovtzeff (1926):
"The material is scanty and scattered. No statistics are available. The interpretation of the few data which we have is open to dispute, and most of the conclusions drawn by modern scholars are hypothetical and often arbitrary. Yet, with all its difficulty, the task is attractive in itself. I am convinced that, without a thorough investigation of the social economic conditions, no attempt to write a general history of the Roman Empire can be successful."
That last part again, from Rostovtzeff: "... without a thorough investigation of the social economic conditions, no attempt to write a general history of the Roman Empire can be successful."
Simkhovitch: "Every law, every statute, every institution has obviously some purpose. But how are we to understand the purposes of the past if we know not the conditions which those purposes were to meet?"
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