538 Darwinism and History 
evolution by general principles encouraged sociologists to hope that 
social evolution could be explained on general principles also. The 
idea of Condorcet, Buckle, and others, that history could be assimi- 
lated to the natural sciences was powerfully reinforced, and the 
notion that the actual historical process, and every social movement 
involved in it, can be accounted for by sociological generalisations, 
so-called “laws,” is still entertained by many, in one form or another. 
Dissentients from this view do not deny that the generalisations at 
which the sociologist arrives by the comparative method, by the 
analysis of social factors, and by psychological deduction may be an 
aid to the historian; but they deny that such uniformities are laws 
or contain an explanation of the phenomena. They can point to the 
element of chance coincidence. This element must have played a 
part in the events of organic evolution, but it has probably in a larger 
measure helped to determine events in social evolution. The collision 
of two unconnected sequences may be fraught with great results. 
The sudden death of a leader or a marriage without issue, to take 
simple cases, has again and again led to permanent political con- 
sequences. More emphasis is laid on the decisive actions of individuals, 
which cannot be reduced under generalisations and which deflect the 
course of events. If the significance of the individual will had been 
exaggerated to the neglect of the collective activity of the social 
aggregate before Condorcet, his doctrine tended to eliminate as 
unimportant the roles of prominent men, and by means of this elimi- 
nation it was possible to found sociology. But it may be urged that 
it is patent on the face of history that its course has constantly been 
shaped and modified by the wills of individuals’, which are by no 
means always the expression of the collective will; and that the 
appearance of such personalities at the given moments is not a 
necessary outcome of the conditions and cannot be deduced. Nor is 
there any proof that, if such and such an individual had not been 
born, some one else would have arisen to do what he did. In some 
cases there is no reason to think that what happened need ever have 
come to pass. In other cases, it seems evident that the actual change 
was inevitable, but in default of the man who initiated and guided it, 
it might have been postponed, and, postponed or not, might have 
borne a different cachet. I may illustrate by an instance which has 
just come under my notice. Modern painting was founded by Giotto, 
and the Italian expedition of Charles VIII, near the close of the six- 
teenth century, introduced into France the fashion of imitating Italian 
" We can ignore here the metaphysical question of freewill and determinism. For the 
character of the individual’s brain depends in any case on ante-natal accidents and coin- 
cidences, and so it may be said that the role of individuals ultimately depends on chance,— 
the accidental coincidence of independent sequences, 
