THE VERDICT OF HISTORY. 115 
not ‘evolve, nor are they ‘derived,’ they step into existence 
by fulguration’’—sudden flashes—,” by a process that is 
technically identical with the theological idea of creation. 
The whole concept of evolution does not at all apply to 
history.” 
In this argument there is considerable force. For, 
indeed, what natural law can account for the rise of hu- 
man institutions, so infinitely diversified in their struc- 
ture? Every age is divided into epochs, and at the center 
of each epoch there is some personage of force and genius. 
But how did Cromwell, Lincoln, Bismarck arise? What 
force produced them? Whence did they evolve? Yet 
without these three names, three great periods in the 
world’s history would be meaningless. . 
By what combination of forces shall we say that the 
various geniuses have developed which, in a manner al- 
most spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures 
of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were 
spent under circumstances which might have produced 
in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, 
as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who 
lived in his age. What made this one country boy the 
most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? 
Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or 
Coleridge, and then tell me why the first two should 
become the greatest lyric poets of their time, and the 
third, one of England’s deepest thinkers? Why did they 
not develop, one into a satisfied Scottish farmer, the 
other into a peddler of notions, and the third into a fat 
and comfortable English banker? 
We quote from an article which appeared in “Theolo- 
gical Quarterly” some twenty years ago: 
‘What process of evolution resulted in the lives and 
deeds of such men as Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, 
