316 The Theory of Genetic Modes 



principles of organic evolution. This view has been re- 

 cently stated with considerable force and dogmatism by 

 Professor Karl Pearson in these words (The Grammar of 

 Science, 2d ed.) : " How far are the principles of natural 

 selection to be applied to the historical evolution of man ? 

 History can never become science, can never be anything 

 but a catalogue of facts rehearsed in more or less pleas- 

 ing language, until these facts are seen to fall into 

 sequences which can be briefly resumed in scientific 

 formulae. These formulae can hardly be other than those 

 which so effectually describe the relations of organic to 

 organic phenomena in the earlier phases of their develop- 

 ment. The growth of national and social life can give us 

 the most wonderful insight into natural selection, and into 

 the elimination of the unstable, on the widest and most 

 impressive scale. Only when history is interpreted in the 

 sense of natural history, does it pass from the sphere of 

 narrative and become science. ... In the early stages of 

 civilization the physical environment and the more animal 

 instincts of mankind are the dominating factors of evolu- 

 tion. Primitive history is not a history of individual men, 

 nor of individual nations in the modern sense ; it is the 

 description of the growth of a typical social group of 

 human beings under the influences of a definite physical 

 environment, and of characteristic physiological instincts. 

 Food, sex, geographical position, are the facts with which 

 the scientific historian has to deal. These influences are 

 just as strongly at work in more fully civilized societies, 

 but their action is more difficult to trace, and is frequently 

 obscured by the temporary action of individual men and 

 individual groups. The obscurity only disappears when 

 we deal with average results, long periods, and large 



