310 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



form of rules, but these rules are knoivn to be not elemental 

 but only cumulative ; and moreover, we know the elements 

 concerned in them. The elements, therefore, are the real 

 subjects for further studies in the realm of philosophy, 

 but not the cumulations, not the rules, which are known 

 to be due to accidental constellations. Of course, the 

 " single ' is the immediate subject of this sort of history, 

 but the single as such is emphatically pronounced to be 

 insignificant, and the cumulations and the cumulative rules, 

 though " singles " in a higher sense of the word, are shown 

 to be anything but elementalities. 



Therefore, on a conception of human history such as 

 that of Buckle, Taine, Lamprecht, and others, we, of course, 

 ought to take an interest in history, because what is 

 " explained " by historical research touches all of us most 

 personally every day and every year. But our philosophy, 

 our view of the world, would remain the same without 

 history as it is with it. We only study history, and 

 especially the history of our own civilisation, because it is a 

 field of actuality which directly relates to ourselves, just 

 as we study for practical purposes the railway time-tables 

 of our own country, but not of Australia ; just as we study 

 the local time-table in particular. 



If the mere rerum cognoscere causas is regarded as 

 the criterium of science, history of Lamprecht's type of 

 course is a science, for its explanations rest upon the 

 demonstration of the typical constellations and of the 

 elemental factor or law from which together the next con- 

 stellations are known necessarily to follow. But history of 

 this kind is not a science in the sense of discovering den 

 ruhenden Pol in der Ersclieinungen Fluclit. 



