viii INTRODUCTION 



ceedings " of his learned society, while the 

 university principal reviews his " Calendar " 

 of all the studies : so far they seem widely 

 apart. But, after all, their differences are 

 only of degree and not of kind; all four are 

 children of the recent and passing phase of 

 knowledge, characterized by the encyclopaedia 

 whether in " articles " or in " papers," 

 in lecture-courses or in snippets from them 

 all is but a question of magnitude, a matter 

 of detail. All four readers alike are inter- 

 ested in knowledge of one sort or another; 

 but these are seen mainly as knowledges, and 

 as advancing analyses, rather than as a grow- 

 ing synthesis. So though they all read very 

 different newspapers, these newspapers are 

 yet much the same, all vividly retrospective 

 of yesterday, and keenly criticizing such and 

 such of its doings, but as yet with little sight 

 of how the day's items are resultants of far 

 distant yesterdays, sowings for far distant 

 morrows. Yet ideas of unity amid diversity, 

 of order amid change, have also long been 

 growing, even finding expression, and this 

 not merely, as sporadically in all ages, in im- 

 pressions and speculations on decline or on 

 better things; but in clearer and more com- 

 prehensive surveys of the processes of change, 

 even inquiries into its method. These, in 



