Abstract
Argues that the history of 'mentalités' fits Michel Foucault's concept of "a human science which has most heavily drawn upon the epistemological region of philology." Foucault only claimed that history of "culture, ideas or science" drew on epistemological regions. The bulk of 19th- and 20th-century historiography, political history, used the epistemological region of economics. Attempts to draw on that of biology resulted in racist history. Philology seems "less capable of causing harm than . . . the other two epistemological regions.