XXYII 



DARWINISM AND HISTORY 

 By J. B. Bury, Litt.D., LL.D. 



Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. 



1. Evolution, and the principles associated with the Darwinian 

 theory, could not fail to exert a considerable influence on the studies 

 connected with the history of civilised man. The speculations which 

 are known as "philosophy of history," as well as the sciences of 

 anthropology, ethnography, and sociology (sciences which though 

 they stand on their own feet are for the historian auxiliary), have 

 been deeply affected by these principles. Historiographers, indeed, 

 have with few exceptions made little attempt to apply them ; but 

 the growth of historical study in the nineteenth century has been 

 determined and characterised by the same general principle which 

 has underlain the simultaneous developments of the study of nature, 

 namely the genetic idea. The "historical" conception of nature, 

 which has produced the history of the solar system, the story of the 

 earth, the genealogies of telluric organisms, and has revolutionised 

 natural science, belongs to the same order of thought as the concep- 

 tion of human history as a continuous, genetic, causal process — a 

 conception which has revolutionised historical research and made 

 it scientific. Before proceeding to consider the application of 

 evolutional principles, it will be pertinent to notice the rise of this 

 new view. 



2. With the Greeks and Romans history had been either a 

 descriptive record or had been written in practical interests. The 

 most eminent of the ancient historians were pragmatical ; that is, 

 they regarded history as an instructress in statesmanship, or in the 

 art of war, or in morals. Their records reached back such a short 

 way, their experience was so brief, that they never attained to the 

 conception of continuous process, or realised the significance of time ; 

 and they never viewed the history of human societies as a phenomenon 

 to be investigated for its own sake. In the middle ages there was 

 still less chance of the emergence of the ideas of progress and 



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