302 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



earlier. So we shall speak of the type of " historical 

 cumulation " as standing between evolution and bare 

 temporal sequence. By means of historical cumulations 

 history may fairly claim to " explain " things. We " under- 

 stand " a mountain or an island in all its actual character- 

 istics, if we know its history. This " historical under- 

 standing " rests on the fact that what first appeared as an 

 inconceivable complex has been resolved into a sequence of 

 single events, each of which may claim to have been ex- 

 plained by actually existing sciences. The complex has been 

 explained as being, though not a real " whole," yet a sum 

 of singularities, every element of which is familiar. 



But you may tell me that my discussion of evolution 

 and of cumulation, as the higher aspects of history, is by no 

 means complete ; nay, more that it is altogether wrong. 

 You would certainly not be mistaken in calling my analysis 

 incomplete. We have called one type of history evolution, 

 the other cumulation ; but how have these higher types 

 been reached ? Has historical enumeration itself, which 

 was supposed to stand at the beginning of all analysis, or 

 has " history ' itself in its strictest sense, as relating to 

 the single as such, risen unaided into something more than 

 " history " ? By no means : history has grown beyond its 

 bounds by the aid of something from without. It is 

 unhistorical elements that have brought us from mere 

 history to more than history. We have created the concept 

 of evolution, not from our knowledge of the single line of 

 events attendant on a single egg of a frog, but from our 

 knowledge that there are billions or more of frogs' eggs, all 

 destined to the same " history," which therefore is not 

 history at all. We have created the concept of cumulation 



