LIFE 3 59 



evolution of organic nature, is at the basis of human 

 history is the unwavering belief of the present writer. 

 History can never become science, can never be anything 

 but a catalogue of facts rehearsed in more or less pleasing 

 language, until these facts are seen to fall into sequences 

 which can be briefly resumed in scientific formulae. These 

 formula; can hardly be other than those which so effectually 

 describe the relations of organic to organic and of organic 

 to inorganic phenomena in the earlier phases of their 

 development. 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 inter- 

 preted in this sense of natural history does it pass from 

 the sphere of narrative and become science. But, on the 

 other hand, in this sense of a description of facts resumed 

 in brief formulae, all science is history. It may take a 

 long training in scientific modes of thought before the 

 literary historian is converted, but his conversion must 

 come sooner or later in an age when the reading public 

 is becoming more and more imbued with the scientific 

 spirit.^ 



1 This view is far from being held by the majority of sociologists and 

 historians. One example typical of many may be cited here : " Every phase 

 of the history of the development of organisms, which Darwin brings forward 

 as an hypothesis, remains, in any case, quite unsuited for comparison with the 

 constantly and uniformly progressive and never-resting history of the human 

 race." — Dr. Georg Mayr : Die Gesetznicissigkeit iin Gesellschaftslebeii. 



2 The present confusion of thought on this subject cannot be illustrated 

 better than by referring to a fairly recent work and to the remarks made 

 upon it by a well-known critic some years ago. Dr. E. Westermarck has 

 published a book entitled : The History of Human Mari-iage (London, 1891). 

 The introduction to this work states in clear and fairly accurate language 

 the scientific method of historical investigation, but when we come to the 

 material of the book we find a singular absence of scientific method. There 

 is a great collection of facts under different headings from every quarter of 

 the globe, but it does not seem to have struck the writer that to find sequences 

 of facts — a growth or evolution expressible by a scientific law — we must 

 follow the changes of one tribe or people at a time. We cannot trace the 

 successive stages of social life except by the minute investigation of facts 

 relating to one social unit, which may, and indeed must, be afterwards 

 compared with like investigations for other units. We have, then, in Dr. 

 Westermarck an excellent example of good theory and bad practice. 



In his critic, Professor Robertson Smith {Nature, vol. xliv. p. 270), 

 we have a writer who has done unsurpassed work in the natural history of 



