THE LOGIC OF HISTORY 323 



phylogeny in general. We have dealt with it from quite 

 a simple realistic point of view, not burdened by any 

 epistemology. We have taken psychical states as realities, 

 just as we have taken as realities all parts of the animal 

 body ; and it seems to me that we were entitled to do so, 

 as it was only history about the actions of men we were 

 dealing with, not their actions themselves. Next summer 

 we shall begin with studying action as action, and then, in 

 fact, a well-founded epistemology will be among our first 

 requirements. And history also will come on the scene 

 once more. 



It is the main result of our last chapters, devoted to 

 systematics, transformism, and human history in particular, 

 that no conclusions really useful for further philosophical 

 discussion can at present be gained from these topics ; 

 there either is too little actual knowledge, or there are only 

 combinations of natural elementalities, but no elementalities 

 of any new kind. 



To sum up : we expected that a rational system might 

 be a biological result of the future, but we could not claim 

 at all to possess such a system. We said that transformism 

 might be proved one day to be a true evolution, governed 

 by one immanent principle, which then would have to be 

 regarded as a new primary factor in nature, but we did not 

 know the least about that principle. 



Human history, on the other hand that is, the only 

 historical process concerned with life that is actually 

 known to have occurred could not teach us anything of 

 an elemental character, since human history, at present at 

 least, did not appear to us as a true evolution, but only as a 

 sum of cumulations, and the singularities of this history, 



