314 ^^^ Theory of Genetic Modes 



the categories of retrospect; and as I have said on an 

 earlier page, any view that does that defeats itself, since 

 it destroys the very lamp from which streams all our 

 light, — not only the light of expectation, but also that 

 of experience. 



The third theory we may call, as the present writer 

 has elsewhere called it,^ the * autonomic ' theory. It 

 holds — and it may therefore be used to illustrate the 

 position developed here — that law must hold in history, 

 since history is human experience ; also that nowhere in 

 its evolution does history, after it has happened^ fail to ful- 

 fil the law^ of cause and effect, could we but unravel the 

 intricacies of the phenomena; but that more than the 

 categories of retrospect and of law are involved — provided 

 it be fotmd out that they are, that is, that more than con- 

 formity to this law may be involved. History may be 

 genetic ; to my view — though perhaps not necessarily to 

 all forms of the autonomic view — it is. All history is 

 sociology; it is also psychology; it is also ethics — it is all 

 these, besides being, in a sense, biology and even physical 

 geography. The autonomic view makes the claim simply 

 that historical sequences shall afford their own interpreta- 

 tion. If there be a really genetic strain in the historical 

 sequences, then it will appear. Each science that has the 

 right, from the demarkation of its phenomena, to enter 

 the field and to attempt to construct the historical material 

 by its own shorthand formulas, shall have the fullest 

 liberty to do so. And each interpretation may be true. 

 Success is the only and the complete justification in each 

 case. 



Each of them may be true, because each of them 



^ Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, art. ' History,' ad fin. 



