The Biological Theory of History 321 



science merely states shorthand formulas for the actual 

 behaviour of phenomena ; then let us look at actual phe- 

 nomena, — social, historical, psychological, — and see how 

 they work before we say that their formulas can ' hardly 

 be other than ' those of organic and inorganic phenomena. 

 It is the attempt to reach positive rules for distinguishing 

 one science from another, as we ascend in the hierarchy of 

 knowledge, that is made in the theory of genetic modes. 

 I have put this criticism in a somewhat extreme form, 

 no doubt, seeing that Professor Pearson does say that the 

 socialistic instinct, as opposed to the individualistic, should 

 have greater emphasis than is usually given it ; but it is 

 his principle that because the higher forms of endowment 

 and organization have arisen under the operation of nat- 

 ural selection, that therefore the laws of their rise and 

 progress in social and ethical life, history, etc., can be 

 reduced to those of struggle for existence and natural 

 selection ; this, I contend, is mistaken. It is potent illus- 

 tration of the denial of any possible genetic modes in the 

 complex phenomena; it asserts that if we could master 

 the conditions, we could not only predict future historical 

 changes, but that the retrospective formulations of histor- 

 ical events stated in terms of biological law would be 

 exhaustive of historical reality as such.^ 



1 We cannot take up in this connection the more recent philosophical discus- 

 sions of the science of history, although the 'theory of genetic modes ' takes 

 sides in the controversy. It says explicitly that history is capable of retrospec- 

 tive interpretation ; but with equal explicitness, that such interpretation does 

 not — or may not — exhaust the meaning of historical sequences. Each of 

 these positions is denied by one party to the philosophical controversy, by the 

 insistence either upon an exclusively ' scientific ' or an exclusively ' humanistic ' 

 (for the most part volwitaristic) construction. An article summing up certain 

 aspects of the controversy is that of Villa, ' Psychology and History,' Monist, 

 XII., January, 1902, pp. 215 ff. (with literary citations). 

 Y 



