2 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



of de Comines were composed in the only way that was then possible. 

 But the muse of history entered on a deeper and more fruitful 

 course when about ninety years ago the study of documents became 

 an essential feature of historical work. It was then that the 

 historian grew up, entered upon his finest inheritance and assumed 

 his Greek title, Enquirer, Student of facts, Man of research. He 

 is now nothing if not a man of science as well as of letters. With 

 a wealth of documents within his reach so great that the 3239 

 Vatican cases full of them formed by no means the richest collection 

 in the archives of Europe, he proceeds to read backwards correctly 

 what many an earlier annalist read forwards falsely. " We are 

 still at the beginning of the documentary age which is destined to 

 make history independent of historians, to develop learning at the 

 expense of writing, and to accomplish a revolution in other sciences 

 as well." 1 



The Historian a Biologist. 



It is not too much to say that he who studies history, national, 

 political, constitutional, ecclesiastical, military or economic is as 

 much a biologist in the widest sense as the botanist and zoologist. 

 Indeed these were till recently termed students of natural history, 

 until the advance of knowledge gave us the various special groups 

 of workers, conveniently called biologists. Though the study of 

 human history by documents is an essential part of the historical 

 method and the student may read his subject backwards, this would 

 not of itself warrant the technical biologist in doing so, even though 

 he be a child of Nature and part of her — "Nature's insurgent son." 

 But some reflection on the facts of certain provinces of science 

 affords ample justification for the method. It is chiefly in questions 

 of origin that it avails, while it fails in that form of research by 

 experiment which is the glory of modern science. A few examples 

 of the process of passing from the known to the unknown will 

 illustrate the method. 



Darwin. 



Much of the Origin of Species and all of the Descent of Man 

 was founded on this method ; thus in the former the conceptions 

 of struggle took their main rise from the work of Malthus on Human 

 Population, and of variation from domesticated animals and plants, 

 and this is true also of Wallace. A mere glance at the divisions of 

 The Descent of Man shows that it could never have been attempted 

 in any other than the backward way. 



1 Acton. A Lecture on the Study of History, p. 19. 



