HISTORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 29 



sit uneasily on crumbling and refractory shale instead of burrowing 

 ever deeper into fertile soil. 



It is in the application of this very doctrine that their theory 

 of history emerges. To them it appears that energy being constant 

 and indestructible in the social as in the physical order, every dyna- 

 mic element works necessarily to associate itself with others, forming 

 under internal influence, by integration an organism ever more and 

 more complex. Simultaneously and subsequently goes on the pro- 

 cess of disintegration, each element disassociating itself from others 

 under external influence, and forming again with other and like busy 

 elements new composites, which in turn inaugurate the next stage 

 of evolution and devolution, of progress and decadence. While these 

 philosophers fail to find the secret of purpose and procedure, yet they 

 never entirely abandoned teleology, and some at least have lately 

 returned to it as essential to their thought, for advance seems to them 

 stronger than retreat, constructive stronger than destructive force. 



The history of philosophy shows that every cycle of thought ends 

 in some phase of materialism. There is at this hour such a school of 

 Augustuluses, and they have been fairly influential in high places. 

 They have unraveled evolutionary logic into what is an absurdity 

 and are loosing the slight hold they have had for a time. Theirs is not 

 the agnosticism which is a state of suspended judgment, but the firm 

 conviction of the obscurantist, denying the right of generalization as 

 to fact or principle, scorning the notion of ethical values in history. 

 They reunite the vicious circle, joining hands \vith Froude and scoff- 

 ing at the idea of science in history, even of an empirical science. 

 For them history is but a mosaic of details, without design or outline, 

 like some cathedral windows in England; patched and assembled 

 from the shreds to which iconoclasts reduced the glorious and glowing 

 paintings which, by color and orderly arrangement, once conveyed 

 noble and exalting thought. These are the haughty disciples of the 

 monograph, the apostles of the "unprinted," the missionaries of 

 chaos. In the wilderness they seek to create, their voice is heard but 

 not heeded. Generous youth has a fine instinct in the matter of 

 barren nonsense. There is science in the sections of the biologist and 

 in the preparation of them, but neither the one nor the other is the 

 science of biology. We are grateful to these painstaking antiquarians 

 for their materials, but we cannot accept the materials in place of the 

 finished edifice. 



Fortunately there has been a saner evolution than this. On Bacon's 

 great principle have stood those who guide and advance it; the 

 principle, namely, that it is the honor and the glory of history to 

 trace causes and their combination with effects. The most com- 

 manding characters of history, like men of common mould, suffer 

 the compulsion of circumstances which they cannot control. It must 



