THE LOGIC OF HISTORY 301 



endeavour, may remain that and nothing more. That 

 may occur in the first as well as in the second group of our 

 division of history with regard to its relation to bodies. 

 Take a cloud and describe its history from the beginning 

 to the end : there would never be much more than pure 

 description. Or take one pair of dogs and describe them 

 and their offspring for four generations or more : I doubt 

 if you will get beyond mere descriptions in this case either. 

 The only step beyond a mere enumeration which we can be 

 said to have advanced in these instances, consists in the 

 conviction, gained at the end of the analysis, that nothing 

 more than such an enumeration is in any way possible. 



Quite the opposite happens when " history " deals with the 

 individual from the egg to the adult : here the whole series 

 of historical facts is seen to form one whole. This case 

 therefore we shall call not history, but evolution, an evolving 

 of something ; the word " evolution " being understood here 

 in a much wider sense than on former occasions, 1 and includ- 

 ing, for instance, the embryological alternative " evolutio " 

 or " epigenesis." 



And half-way between enumeration and evolution there 

 now stands a type of history which is more than the one 

 and less than the other : there is a kind of intelligible 

 connection between the consecutive historical stages and 

 yet the concept of a whole does not come in. The geological 

 history of a mountain or of an island is a very clear instance 

 of this class. It is easy to see here, how what has been always 

 becomes the foundation of what will be in the next phase of 

 the historical process. There is a sort of cumulation of con- 

 secutive phases, the later ones being impossible without the 



1 See pp. 26, 45, 54, etc. 



