326 



NA rURE 



[xA.UGUST I, I 90 1 



LETTER TO THE EDITOR. 



The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. ^ 



History as a Science. 



There have lately appeared in Nature suggestive summaries 

 of addresses by Sir H. Roscoe, Dr. D. J. Hill and Prof. 

 Ramsay on, respectively, "The Work of the London Univer- 

 sity," "The Extension of Knowledge" and "The Functions of 

 a University," together with various other papers of an educa- 

 tional character. And to these I would beg permission to add 

 some remarks on the importance of the recognition and endow- 

 ment, in this country also, of history as a science. Three things 

 are required to make of a body of knowledge a science : 

 (i) verifiability of statements ; (2) sufficient length and breadth 

 of survey to make possible the discovery of laws, or verifiable 

 generalisations ; and (3) the actual discovery, or an approximation 

 to the discovery, of one or more laws of the facts constituting the 

 body of knowledge considered. But history, as it is commonly 

 studied and taught in British Universities, embraces such brief 

 periods that it can, at best, be characterised only by the most 

 elementary of these three requirements. In geology we have 

 had a science of earth's history since the discovery of the 

 law of the succession of strata. In anthropology we have 

 not, as yet, a science of man's history, seeing that the law 

 of the succession of civilisations has not jet been discovered, 

 or has not, at least, yet been adequately verified. The first 

 object, however, of this letter is briefly to point out that, 

 though the science of man's history would be the most complex 

 lit the sciences of evolution, yet the immensely varied results 

 of the researches of the last half, and particularly of the last 

 quirter, of the nineteenth century do bring within the scope 

 of reasonable aims the discovery and verification of general 

 laws of history, with all the incalculable consequences which 

 would therefrom follow in the power given to interpret the 

 past, to guide the present and to forecast the future. And the 

 further object of this letter is to urge that, endowed as the study 

 of history as a science is in all the greater Universities, both 

 of Europe and of America, it should at length be adequately 

 endowed also in British Universities, and more especially in 

 those of Scotland, now so munificently endowed, and whose sons, 

 since Adam Smith, in his " Wealth of Nations," David Hume, 

 in his "Natural History of Religion," and John Millar, in his 

 "Origin of Ranks," have been among the foremost workers 

 and discoverers in this Scicntia Scicntiaruni. 



But theories of history have also their history. And we may 

 better appreciate the argument for the endowment, at length, of 

 chairs of general history — of history studied with such generality 

 as to make possible the discovery of laws, or, in a word, of 

 history as a science — if we cast a glance on the history of general 

 studies of history during the last century and a half. We shall 

 find it clearly divisible into three periods, on the third of which 

 we are now entering. In all these periods, indeed, two great 

 directions, or rather two great methods of historical research, 

 may be noted — the one synthetic and speculative, the other 

 analytic and inductive. But of the former character was more 

 distinctively the method of the first period, of the latter 

 character the method of the second period, and again, but with 

 incomparably more justification, considering the enormous 

 wealth of facts accumulated in the second period, the third 

 period promises to be, while distinctively synthetic, verifiable in 

 its syntheses. 



The first period may be dated from Turgot's second discourse 

 at the Sorbonne, " Sur les Progres successifs de I'Esprit 

 Humain" (1750), and especially from Hume's " Dialogues on 

 Natural Religion," written about the saine time, and his later- 

 written "Natural History of Religion " (1757). This synthetic 

 and speculative era culminated in the philosophies of Hegel 

 and of Comte — for Comte's philosophy is entitled to be 

 called "positive" rather because of its speculative dogmatism 

 than of its inductive verifiability. And around these giants of 

 the forest there grew up such a luxuriance of minor " philoso- 

 phies of history " as produced a reaction against all general 

 views of history— a reaction from which we, in Great Britain, 

 have unfortunately been the latest to recover. 



But among Hume's contemporaries and friends were two 



NO. 1657, VOL. 64] 



masters of the other mode of historical research — the analytic and 

 inductive — Adam Smith and John Millar. From their time to 

 ours the drudging brother has conducted his researches side by 

 side with the high-flying brother, each too apt to sneer at the 

 other, though the function of each was indispensable for the 

 success of the great quest consciously or unconsciously common 

 to both. To the aid of inductive rather than of speculative 

 historical research came, after 1859, the " Origin of Species" 

 year — the immense development of the general theory of evolu- 

 tion which added to the theory of kosmological evolution sug- 

 gested by Kant and Laplace the theory of biological evolution 

 elaborated by Darwin and Wallace. Simultaneously with the de- 

 velopment of this more complex theory of evrilution, the re- 

 searches into man's psychical as well as physical history have had 

 the most fruitful results. And these are now being more and 

 more clearly seen to be contributions to a theory of anthropo- 

 logical evolution which will transform unverifiable, or but 

 partially verifiable, "philosophies of history" into a science of 

 history, conceived at length as the most complex of the verifiable 

 evolutional sciences. 



The chief, perhaps, of the contributions to such a science of 

 history may be thus briefly summarised, (i) The ethnological 

 discoveries, which have resulted in a theory of the origins of • 

 civilisation in a conflict of higher and lower races. (2) The 

 folklorist discoveries, generalised in a theory of primitive con- 

 ceptions of nature as conceptions of its solidarity through the 

 interaction and limitless transformation of its parts. (3) The 

 logical and psychological discoveries, which have verified the 

 " Secret of Hegel." or the theory of the process of thought, 

 both individual and historical, as an advance through differentia- 

 tion to a higher integration. (4) The physical discoveries 

 generalised in the principle of the conservation of energy, 

 and hence in a theory of scientific conceptions of nature 

 as still, even as primitively, conceptions of its solidarity 

 through the interaction of its parts, but now with the 

 profoundly important substitution of the notion of proved 

 equivalent, for supposed limitless transformation. And (5) the 

 historical discoveries resulting in a theory of civilisation as a 

 process with dateable (as yet no doubt only approximately date- 

 able) beginnings under definable conditions ; as a process the 

 astonishing unity of which becomes more and more apparent 

 with the progress of the researches which have demonstrated 

 the derivation, certainly, of Semitic, and, almost certainly, of 

 Chinese, from Chaldean civilisation ; the later derivation of 

 Aryan, through Pelasgian. from the connected Chaldean and 

 Egyptian civilisations ; and the derivation possibly (as I per- 

 sonally venture to think probably) of the civilisations also of 

 the New from certain of those of the Old World ; and, finally, 

 as a process the unity of which further appears in such correla- 

 tions and synchronisms of development .as that illustrated, for 

 instance, in what I have called the moral revolution of the 

 sixth (or fifth-sixth) century B.C., in all the countries of civilisa- 

 tion from the Hoangho to the Tiber, and which has been more 

 and more fully verified since I pointed it out in 1873 ("The 

 New Philosophy of History "). The other theories I have re- 

 ferred to may, or may not, be found fully verifiable. But surely 

 it may reasonably be anticipated that, from consideration of the 

 ever-accumulating facts of these five great classes, we shall 

 sooner or later discover general laws of history — laws of racial 

 evolution, of intellectual development and of social progress — 

 and draw from them results of the highest possible importance 

 for the interpretation of the past, the guidance of the present, 

 and the forecasting of the future ? 



But, if so, and if I have thus succeeded in showing that the 

 discovery and verification of general laws of history is now 

 brought within the scope of reasonable aims, it should 

 be unnecessary for me to waste many words on the more 

 practical object of this letter, viz. to urge that, endowed as 

 the study of history as a science is in all the greater Universities 

 of our European and American rivals, it should at length 

 be adequately endowed also in the Universities of England, and 

 more especially, perhaps, of Scotland. For, as Lord Rosebery 

 has over and over again said — for instance, the other day (May 

 15) at a meeting of the University of London—" The struggle 

 of this coming century will not be one so much of brute force as 

 of trained intelligence. . . . No nations are satisfied with the 

 standard of education that prevailed twenty-five years ago. 

 Every nation demands a more keen and more trained and, if I 

 may use the adjective, a more versatile intelligence than that 

 which was adequate for the business methods of the Empire in 



