14 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letiees. 



The second great condition of history is found in the division 

 of mankind into races, with their various characteristics. Here 

 again, a school of historians is found to claim the characteristics 

 of race as the main-spring o£ history. The laws of heredity and 

 of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for life can be applied 

 to the history of mankind as well as to the history of birds and 

 beasts. But in the one case as in the other there is danger in 

 trying to make these laws explain everything. The origin of our 

 free institutions to-day can be traced in the stubborn hardihood 

 and love of personal freedom of the German stock from which 

 we have sprung. The same steady bravery of the Teutonic stock 

 which won the day at Gettysburg and at Saratoga, changed the 

 history of Europe also at Waterloo, at the siege of Leyden, at Mor- 

 garten and at Lutzen. The same love of local freedom, which created 

 the United States of America, created also the kindred Federation 

 of Switzerland and the United States of the Netherlands, But why 

 have a part of the same race in Germany for a thousand years 

 submitted to petty local despotisms, from which they have but 

 just emerged? Why did the Arabs sleep in their peninsu'a till 

 Mohammed came ; and what has since become of the old Norse 

 love of daring adventure ? What is the secret of the marvellous 

 change now going on in Japan? These are questions which his<- 

 tory indeed can answer, but not a history based on race alcnel 

 The law of heredity can best explain the temperaments, features 

 and dispositions of mankind. Leading traits of character will be 

 preserved by nations through every vicissitude of fortune and 

 every change of faith or clime. The Gaul of Ciesar is the French- 

 man of to day in disposition, but not in institutions, language or 

 religion. His leading traits have survived the influence of im- 

 perial and of papal Rome and of the German conquest. The 

 Turk on the throne is still the Tartar of the steppes in spite of 

 the Koran on the one hand, and of Europe on the other. Three 

 thousand years have not sufficed to change the physical or the 

 moral traits of the Greek, the Hindoo or the Negro. The law of 

 race has its limits ; but within these it is powerful. 



The third great condition or cause of history is found in ideas. 

 Man is distinguished from all other forms of life on this globe by 



