3. THE HISTORY OF MANKIND 



WE only assume hypothetically that phylogeny has 

 happened, and we know scarcely anything about the factors 

 concerned in it. Now, it certainly would be of great import- 

 ance, if at least in a small and definite field of biology we 

 were able to state a little more, if the mere fact of phylogeny, 

 of " history," were at least beyond any doubt within a certain 

 range of our biological experience. And indeed there is 

 one department of knowledge, where history, as we know, 

 has happened, and where we also know at least some of the 

 factors concerned in it. 



I refer to the history of mankind; and I use the 

 expression not at all in its anthropological or ethnographical 

 sense, as you might expect from a biologist, but in its 

 proper and common sense as the history of politics and of 

 laws and of arts, of literature and of sciences : in a 

 word, the history of civilisation. Here is the only field, 

 where we know that there actually are historical facts : 

 let us try to find out what these facts can teach us about 

 their succession. 



The theory of history in this narrower meaning of the 

 word has been the subject of very numerous controversies 

 in the last twenty years, especially in Germany, and these 

 controversies have led very deeply into the whole 



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