30 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



be admitted and duly emphasized that there is a mystery, a nature 

 of things, which runs with and athwart human purpose; that there 

 is a cosmic order, pregnant with a train of events that are inevitable; 

 there are relation, proportions and links in affairs and in men, which 

 are predetermined. This, when disengaged from the documents, is 

 what has been designated the weft or texture of history. Thereon is 

 drawn and embroidered by man the enduring picture which is the 

 historical record. This is the view of history which lays emphasis 

 neither on collective nor on individual man, but on the personal and 

 race conscience alike and in equal proportion. The law of moral pro- 

 gress has always imposed itself on societies, and always will, just in 

 proportion as individuals will that it shall, and labor without cease 

 for the purpose. 



It was a great saying which Kant uttered when he said: By strug- 

 gle and effort ought all human faculties to perfect themselves; moral 

 progress is antecedent to all other forms and the source of them; 

 besides, the conquests of each generation are the capital of the next, 

 so that the sole condition of human perfectibility is the establishment 

 of a civil society founded on justice. The determination to realize 

 existence more completely, to struggle for the ideal, to aspire higher 

 the larger the number in every society who so feel it, and so 

 behave, the more completely will be overcome the apparently in- 

 superable obstacles to advance, the bondage of the past over the 

 present, the restriction of each people by its contemporaries, the 

 powerful solidarity of habit, of creed, and of inertia among men. 



This is the view of historical science which, whether right or wrong, 

 was characteristic of the nineteenth century in all its best and most 

 fruitful work: the recognition of the evolutionary movement, the 

 exhibition of the uses to which men put it; the display of its organic 

 integration, the proof of its external disintegration by moral forces; 

 the sloughing of refuse, the renewal of vital powers. This doctrine 

 may not pretend to the high scientific quality of some others, but 

 somehow it satisfies the master workmen and gratifies the aspira- 

 tions, instincts, and convictions of readers far better than any other. 

 It is the view which still controls the spiritual and intellectual activ- 

 ities of the best men in the highest civilizations. Neglecting the 

 philosophical "impasse" of liberty and necessity, it satisfies the re- 

 quirements of an imperious demand; that for the tangible results of 

 human experience. 



The fruits of science being both a means of enjoyment and a guide 

 to conduct, our attention has naturally been monopolized by the 

 marvelous achievements of physical science. This is incorrect and 

 unjust; the advance and the results of the humanistic sciences have 

 been equally remarkable. The polymath of the eighteenth century, 

 with his unorganized masses of uncouth learning, would to-day be 



