THE SCIENCE IN HISTORY 495 



about this existing state. Every event is a means to an end; it is 



purposive. Either some seemingly unimportant event has widened into 



numerous ends or the many events have united to produce a given end. 



According to this point of view, the historian eliminates factors which 



seemingly have no purposive relation to the result. These effects are 



employed to explain causes rather than that causes are shown blindly to 



produce effects. As Mr. Freeman constantly insisted: 



You can not understand the present without a knowledge of the past, nor 

 can you understand the past without a knowledge of the present. 



The present is the purposed end and is to be explained by the means 

 which brought it into being. The past is the means and can only be 

 understood in the light of the end which it is to bring about. In the 

 natural sciences there is no such view of phenomena as this predomi- 

 nating. Chemical affinities are not regarded as means to bring about 

 ends, but as forces which produce effects blindly and necessarily and 

 will do so on all occasions; there is nothing arbitrary about the indi- 

 vidual result; but in history we are dealing with human society, where 

 movement is caused by volition, by "individual will acts." As far as 

 man can perceive, history is made, not entirely, of course, but very 

 materially by purposive ideas and not wholly by the blind action of 

 chemical-physical forces. 



Instinctively one asks whether this teleological view corresponds 

 with the actual state of society, and the answer must be negative. 

 Studying society carefully before any great historical movement, it 

 would seem that out of it any number of events might emerge. There 

 are possibilities of many great movements from the conditions present; 

 and, after we know the outcome, we have a case of double sixes appear- 

 ing when the dice are thrown. We may argue from the double sixes 

 back to the cause, if we will; but from the causes ascertained by us, 

 double twos might have resulted as well. The solution of a problem in 

 probabilities is the final result of any science which studies human 

 dynamics. 



We have hit upon the weakness in any argument to prove history 

 a science comparable to the natural sciences. The scientist believes in 

 the universal reign of causality and fixes as the goal of his search the 

 establishment of causal relations between his phenomena which have 

 truth in reality, that is, objective truth. The belief in the persistency of 

 such causal relations assures him that there lurks no subjective ele- 

 ment in his result. Now the phenomena of developing society are of 

 such a nature that any association of causal relation between them will 

 generally contain an element of uncertainty, because there is lacking 

 an objective criterion; and hence the mind hesitates to assume that a 

 knowledge of the complete cause is ascertained or that the effect must 

 have followed the causes which can be determined. That all which 

 happens in society is the result of effective causes can not be denied by 



