History a Genetic Science 313 



mulated facts may have, for all we know, other aspects 

 also capable of formulation. Other shorthand expressions 

 may be needed for their behaviour as parts of a larger 

 whole which is constituted as the system which includes 

 them is genetically unfolded. 



6. History a Genetic Science 



History itself, considered as a science, illustrates the 

 cases mentioned second and third above. There are 

 various theories of history, yet all of them may be classed 

 as in type falling under three headings. Those writers 

 who reject the truly genetic from the sequences of history 

 come first. In their theories they interpret history as a 

 series of happenings under the law of cause and effect, 

 showing from first to last a series of complications all of 

 which may be considered as but different arrangements of 

 given elements under the action of constant causes. This 

 is strictly an attempt to make history a retrospective 

 science, not only by the application of the categories of 

 retrospect, but also by the claim that this application 

 affords an exhaustive statement of possible knowledge 

 of the series which comes to our apprehension in the 

 events of days and years. There is nothing over --no 

 meaning for higher interpretation than that formulated 

 in the theory of the complication of elements under the 

 law of causation. 



A second view of history finds it practically lawless 

 a series of caprice-like discharges from the void. It is 

 not an unfolding from anywhere to anything ; but a series 

 of terms whose sequence is absolutely unpredictable, 

 because the terms are unrelated. This does violence to 



