The Biological Theory of History 315 



may deal with an aspect which fulfils the demands of a 

 certain sort of construction. To deny this in favour of an 

 exclusive cause-and-effect theory is to violate our first 

 postulate, as formulated above ; it is to assert that retro- 

 spective formulations, even when fully made out, are by 

 their own right exhaustive. In a discussion on another 

 page, we may find an indication of how such double or 

 multiple constructions of the same data may be possible — 

 in the case of moral statistics. In individuals' actions, as 

 seen, for example, in the statistics of suicide, the genetic 

 character of the series is evident — a series of which each 

 term is determined by an act of will, and illustrates a stage 

 of mental progress, while yet statistics of the series, taken 

 for a great many cases, are found to illustrate, in their 

 distribution, the law of probabilities, as strictly as do the 

 veriest mechanical events or the veriest ' chance ' sequences. 

 Another case has also been discussed above, and is men- 

 tioned again below : that of biological evolution advanc- 

 ing under the law of natural selection, and at the same 

 time possibly embodying purpose and teleology. Biological 

 progress may be teleological, and really genetic — new 

 stages of process, new genetic modes, appearing in the 

 series — while, at the same time, the entire series, inter- 

 preted after it has happened, shows the character of regu- 

 larity and uniformity which justify its construction in terms 

 of natural selection from variations distributed in accord- 

 ance with the probability curve. 



§ 7. The Biological Theory of History 



This general position may be given concreteness by a 

 detailed case. It is evidently in antagonism to the view 

 that human history can be exhaustively explained by the 



