The conception of history as concerning itself entirely with politics and substituting narrative for analysis is not implicit in historicism but was determined by the political and intellectual context in which German historians from Ranke to Gerhard Ritter worked. A broader definition of historicism as the attitude which sees history as the only true way of understanding human reality would include most of the great thinkers of the 19th century, including Marx, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, and Michelet, and does not exclude analytical thought. The supposed contrast between historicism and Enlightenment thought needs to be reexamined. German historicism was very politicized and showed an optimism and belief in progress often more marked than found in the more critical and detached attitude of some Enlightened thinkers.