1908] Biology and History. 47 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, FebriiarT 14, 1908. 



Alexander Siemens, Esq., M.Inst.,C.E., Yice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Caleb Williams Saleeby, Esq., M.D.. F.R.S.E. 



Biology and History. 



[abstract.] 

 You will not expect me to insult you this evening with any dis- 

 cussion of the garbage and gossip, records of scoundrels and courts 

 and battles, murder and theft, wliich we were taught at school under 

 the name of History. If history be, as nearly all historians have 

 conceived it, and as Gibbon defined it, " little more than the register 

 of the crimes, folhes and misfortunes of mankind," it is an empty 

 and contemptible study, save for the social pathologist. But if 

 history, without by any means ignoring great men or underrating 

 their influence, is, or should be, the record of the past life of man- 

 kind, of progi-ess and decadence, the rise and fall of empires and 

 civilisations, and their mutual reactions ; if it be the record of the 

 intermittent ascent of man, "sagging but pertinacious"; if this 

 record be subject to the law of causation, and therefore susceptible, 

 in theory at least, of explanation as well as description ; if its factors 

 are at work to-day, and will shape the destiny of all the to-morrows ; 

 if it be neither phantasmagoria, nor panorama, nor pageant, nor pro- 

 cession, but process — in short, an organic drama — then, indeed, it is a 

 supreme study. Especially must it appeal to us, who boast a tradi- 

 tion greater than the world has ever yet seen, and kinship with men 

 who represent the utmost of which the human spirit has yet shown 

 itself capable — who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but 

 to whom the names of all our imperial predecessors, from Babylon 

 to Spain, serve as a perpetual memento mori. My special question, 

 this evening, is whether there are inherent and necessary reasons 

 why our predecessors' fate must sooner or later be ours ? Must i-aces 

 die ? — or, if we are sceptical about races, and more especially about 

 the so-called Anglo-Saxon race, must civilisations, states or nations 

 die? 



Nations, races, civilisations rise, we shall all agree, because to in- 

 herent virtue of breed they add sound customs and laws, acquirements 

 of discipline and knowledge. But, these acquirements made, power 



