自20世紀初梁啟超祭出「新史學」大纛以來，中國史家紛紛提出了各種史學理念，莫不以「新史學」冠名之。但新史學之求「新」，除了在時間上標識與以往史學的區別，它在各家史學觀及方法論中並無一致的方向，誠如有學者指出，其本身即已成為「表達各自期望和理念的集合概念」。因此，歷史學究竟是一門怎樣的知識門類，所謂「新史學」又該追求怎樣的理想境地，就必然是一個持久的爭論議題了，它涉及對這門學科尋求自身定位的深層思考。在20世紀上半葉科學主義日盛的中國學界，歷史藝術論則認為歷史具有藝術性，甚或史學亦是一門藝術，它對科學化史學的主張持謹慎和反省態度，多強調史學與科學的差異，不僅指出新史學以自然科學或社會科學為參照的弊端，還從史學與藝術之關係的理解上，對歷史這門學科的性質重作新的判斷，並由此探討更為理想的新史學方向。本文試圖重新審視早期中國新史學的科學化探索、理性人文主張以及非理性思想等，通過詳細梳理相關學者對歷史學與藝術之關係的認識，並參照他們在史學實踐上的表現，以確定這些認識與他們追求的新史學理想之間的聯繫。

Since Liang Qichao announced the terms of Neo-Historiography in the early 20th century, many Chinese scholars proposed sorts of historical concepts beneath these terms. However, besides their recognitions of time series which were different from the traditional historiography, these scholars didn't reach a consensus on historiography views or methodologies. Sometimes their recognitions were even clearly opposite. So what kind of knowledge the historiography was, and how to pursuit an ideal position for Neo-Historiography would become long controversies, which required deep thinking on defining historiography. In the first half of 20th century, scientism was rising in Chinese academic circle. Under this circumstance, on the art of historiography considered that historiography was artistic to a certain extent, or it was a kind of art. Moreover, on the art of historiography was introspective on scientization of historiography and emphasized the differences between historiography and science. It not only pointed the disadvantages of Neo-Historiography on taking natural sciences and social science as reference scales, but also reconsidered the characters of history on the basis of the understanding the relevance between historiography and art. Therefore, new directions of Neo-Historiography could be discussed in that case. Through detailed examination on these scholars recognitions on the relevance between historiography and art, meanwhile, investigating their academic practices, this article tries to review the historical thought of scientific school of history, rational humanist historians and anti-rational historians in the early 20th century during the exploring of Neo-Historiography to define the relation between these historical thoughts and their ideals of Neo-Historiography.