SOCIOLOGY AND HERO-WORSHIP 



commercial, and literary, in relation to other na- 

 tions. Mr. Allen attaches so much value to 

 considerations of this kind that he is led to stig- 

 matize Mr. Bagehot's method as unscientific 

 and unfruitful in good result. Mr. Bagehot, as 

 a thinker of more catholic mind, would hardly, 

 I believe, have been equally ready to undervalue 

 Mr. Allen's work. As explanations after the fact 

 which are pretty much the only kind of expla- 

 nations we can expect to have where the concrete 

 events of history are concerned speculations 

 like those of Mr. Allen are extremely interest- 

 ing and suggestive. I agree in the main, how- 

 ever, with Dr. James in his views as to the 

 inadequacy of Mr. Allen's method. It is no 

 doubt true that " no geographical environment 

 can produce a given type of mind ; it can only 

 foster and further certain types, . . . and thwart 

 and frustrate others." No doubt, too, Mr. Al- 

 len makes a very extravagant statement when he 

 says that " if the people who went to Hamburg 

 had gone to Timbuctoo they would now be 

 indistinguishable from the semi-barbarian ne- 

 groes who inhabit that central African metropo- 

 lis ; and if the people who went to Timbuctoo 

 had gone to Hamburg they would now have 

 been white-skinned merchants driving a roaring 

 trade in imitation sherry and indigestible port." 

 In reading such a statement as this, one seems, 

 indeed, to have fallen upon pre-Darwinian days ; 

 l6q 



