THE SCIENCE IN HISTORY 499 



than in the cultivated. It is this close approximation to a type that 

 gives the biologist encouragement in his investigation of the life of the 

 lower organisms. As soon as he is compelled to acknowledge the 

 entrance into his problem of individual volition, his hope of discovering 

 laws or causal relations similar to those found by the chemist or 

 physicist is limited just as is the case of the historian. In civilized 

 nations the variations among men are multitudinous. Amidst such 

 great dissimilarities can we talk of a generic man ? Is every one com- 

 pounded of two parts, a personal and generic ? 



There are times when the contrary theory seems justifiable, when 

 one is willing to declare with Emerson : 



Every true man is a cause, a country, an age: requires infinite space and 

 number and time fully to accomplish his thought — and posterity seems to follow 

 his steps as a procession. A man Csesar is born and for ages after we have a 

 Roman Empire. Christ is born and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his 

 genius, that he is confounded with the possible of man. An institution is the 

 lengthened shadow of one man, as the Reformation of Luther — Methodism of 

 Wesley. All history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout 

 and earnest persons. 



To outward seeming eminent men are the result of fortuitous vari- 

 ation and are similar to the " sports " of the biologist, since the connec- 

 tion between them and their origin remains even more obscure than 

 slighter variations; and these "sports" of history are unquestionably 

 the direct cause of changes in the community. Their peculiarities are 

 preserved, permeate the whole mass of individuals and become in time 

 part of the social tradition. The simile of the deep ocean of social 

 psychic life and the waves of individual activities does not present the 

 correct picture, for the waves subside and leave the depth of the ocean 

 the same, while the influence of the individual does not disappear but 

 lives on after his death, increasing the extent and variety of that 

 environment out of which he came. 



The limitations of the science of history are very real. The phe- 

 nomena are hidden in the past from personal observation, are the most 

 complex of all sciences, are unique in character and apparently the 

 result of the will acts of individual men, whose motives are derived from 

 mingled hereditary and environmental influences. At times the historian 

 can by induction or deduction discover a sufficient cause of the phe- 

 nomena, but more frequently he is obliged to acknowledge the impossi- 

 bility of unravelling the tangled thread of causal relations amidst the 

 purposive and arbitrary acts of millions of individuals. As historians 

 must seek for the social forces in the souls of the individuals composing 

 society, historical cause will always remain in the circle of probability 

 and thus differ from the causes established by scientists in the physical 

 and biological world. 



