III. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY.

By J. MURRAY MACDONALD.

THE idea of Progress is the ruling thought of the modern world. There is no earnest thinker who is not influenced by it. It is the principle by which historians seek to systematise the facts with which they deal. It is the very backbone of science. It exercises a marked influence on practical politics. It penetrates every branch of general literature. It has even, of late years, begun to influence the thinking of theologians.

But this term "Progress," without further qualification, is a vague and misleading term, and one which has had a baleful influence on politics on the Continent, and which has been the occasion of much indecision in the conduct of

affairs here in England. This arises from the fact that the term "Progress," unless strictly defined, means nothing more than change. It is without scope or goal, and has no standard by which to estimate change. The improved, more perfect state of things, towards which it professedly tends, is altogether undetermined. Is it possible to state what it is that constitutes this progressive life-what its end and aim is? Can we determine the whence and the whither of this great struggling human life whose deeds constitute what is called History? This is the question to which I shall attempt, in this paper, to give a very general

answer.

I shall best pave the way for my answer by adverting briefly to the theory of life which has lately gained currency as the result of the discoveries of science. These discoveries have established the fact that this earth was at one time a molten mass, in some such state as the sun is at present; that this mass gradually cooled; that, as this process of cooling went on, life, in a perfectly simple, uniform type, showed itself; and that, from this primitive, uniform type, all higher grades of animal life have originated by a process of evolution, due to the continuous operation of purely physical causes. The attempt to account for the first form of life, on what are called physical principles, has failed. Darwin stated his belief that this primitive form was due, not to physical causes, but to the direct action of the Creator.

Given, however, the simplest form of life, he held that science could account for all subsequent, more complex grades, without recourse to the idea of the special action of the Creator. He believed also that as the earliest forms of life have disappeared, and given place to other and higher forms, so, by a similar process of modification, those species of animal and plant life now existing will, in the far-off future, have given place to new and dominant species, that man, for example, will, in some immeasurably distant period, have disappeared from the face of the earth, and have been replaced by some species possessing higher corporeal and mental endowments. The conditions which determine the progress are purely casual ones. That is to say, the succession of animals might have been different from what it actually has been; the theory maintaining that there was no definite aim, no intelligent purpose underlying and determining the process of evolution. The course which the process has followed can now be determined; but so far as can be seen, it might have followed a different one. It is, for example, conceivable, according to the hypothesis, that such an animal as man might not have been evolved from the process at all; and, consequently, that thought, or the power of interpreting the process, might not have been evolved, and that thus the process might have remained blind to its own course. And it is because the process is thus a natural, aimless one, not one urging towards a definite end and aim in which it completely realises itself, that it is maintained that it will go on in the future as it has in the past. If it were not so, if the process were a predetermined one which reached its final stage of realisation in consciousness, then man, as the absolute summit of the life-structure, would be able to determine not merely the course of life but its aim, its essential meaning. He would be not merely the product of vast natural forces which find in him only partial realisation, but he would have risen above the temporary life of the individual, who forms but a link in the great process, who receives the spark of life from his progenitors, and who passes it on to his posterity; he would have risen above that existence in time which is blind to its origin and its end, and he would live in conscious union with that Will whose purpose in the world had now reached its final stage. But according to the theory this is not so. The origin of life is unknown, its course uncertain, and its end lost in the interminable future.

If this view of life be a true one, then a Science of History, in any true sense of the term, is impossible. Mr. Herbert

Spencer indeed, though holding this view, does develop a theory of the course of human life, which, though it does not claim to be completely satisfactory, does claim to be final. In the early workings of conscious life, while mankind had amassed but a meagre knowledge of the phenomena of the world, and little or no knowledge at all of the laws that determine these phenomena, each phenomenon, as it presented itself, was not accounted for by the action of law, but was regarded as the manifestation of some power, external to the phenomenon itself, and capricious in its action. As knowledge grew, as phenomena began to group themselves in classes, these external, capricious powers gradually grew less in number, till in the Jewish and Christian religions the idea of law became so far predominant that all action was referred to one power, though that power was still a personal and capricious one, one whose relation to the world changed with the changing attitude of mankind towards it, depended, that is to say, on the conduct of men. And now, at last, the truth, towards which mankind has throughout the ages been slowly advancing, is fully recognised, and man's highest duty is declared to be the recognition of universal and immutable laws, and the regulation of human life in accordance with them. It is hardly necessary to say that, according to the theory, the laws which regulate human life in society and the state have always been determined by the interpretation given to natural phenomena,that caprice and brute force have given place to law and justice contemporaneously with the elimination of caprice as the controlling power in nature.

On the presuppositions of this theory, I shall have something to say at a later stage of the discussion. In the meantime, what I desire to point out is, that Mr. Spencer's theory of life gains a ready acceptance because it is an easy and, at first sight, satisfactory explanation of that process of renunciation of the mere individual, capricious will, which is the necessary presupposition of action in social life, and does in reality constitute progress in history. But this process of renunciation, as he explains it, does not in truth constitute a progressive life; and this, not merely because progress implies a recognisable end, but because the renunciation is. purely formal, that is, based upon the recognition of laws which are not only immutable and, in the last resort, inexplicable, but which have no essential relation with the life which they determine. The so-called progress is a merely formal adjustment of human life to inexplicable necessity; not progress towards a fuller, completer life, whose end is to

realise itself not merely as the shadow of the necessary but as its substance and presupposition. I may express this otherwise. According to Mr. Spencer, the fabric of the world is formed of necessity and chance. Chance, at the beginning, determined the course of events in the world, though, by some means, this course, when once taken, is no longer the mere creature of chance but assumes fixity, and then, as the necessary element, co-operates with chance in determining the subsequent course. He thus ascribes to chance a reason of its own, by which it shapes the universe, and because of this ascription it is unnecessary for him to ascribe to reason itself an essential relation with the world; and human life, as conscious, thus becomes formal and aimless, empty and worthless.

This is the result of that interpretation of life which Mr. Spencer deduces from the recent discoveries of science, and which he maintains is final. Now, no theory of life can be satisfactory or complete which is not in essential harmony with the facts of science, the facts, as distinguished from the theories deduced from these facts by scientific men. If then we accept as true those facts of life which the labours of scientific men have lately revealed; if we admit that the discoveries made in Geology and Biology force us to the conclusion that "the present conformation and composition of the earth's crust, the distribution of land and water, and the infinitely diversified forms of animals and plants which constitute its present population, are merely the final terms in an immense series of changes which have been brought about in the course of immeasurable time by the operation of causes similar to those which are at work at the present day";-if we admit this, are we also forced to the conclusion that the theory, of which Mr. Herbert Spencer is the most distinguished exponent, is an adequate explanation of the facts of human life in so far as human life is distinguished from mere animal life?

This question has been answered once for all by the late Professor Green; and those who desire a detailed answer are referred to his writings, more particularly to the series of articles which appeared in the Contemporary Review in 1877-8. I can give here only a brief summary of results.

Mr. Spencer discusses his theory of knowledge after discussing and accepting the theory of evolution as an adequate explanation of the world. He finds that, as the world has actually developed itself, each higher species of life succeeded the lower in such a way as to preclude the idea that any species had a conscious part in the production of any other

species; in such way also as to destroy the idea that there was any conscious or final purpose determining the succession as a whole. The laws which now regulate the living world are the laws which have made that world what it is. In them that world is summed up and finds its explanation; and beyond them, to that common source which they suggest but do not reveal, none of the special forms of life can penetrate. Man therefore had as little to do with the production of the world as it existed before his appearance, as that pre-existent world had consciously to do with the production of man. His destiny is linked to the world as a whole by the same laws as link together the destinies of the lower species of life. But although his destiny is thus the same as the destiny of all living things, although he too is the creature of laws from dependence on whose action he cannot free himself, he is endowed with a power peculiar to himself, the power of consciousness, the power of obtaining a knowledge of the entire system of laws and of acting in conscious harmony with them.

Whence does this endowment spring? How is consciousness related to the world at large? The obvious answer, according to the theory, is that the relation is that of shadow to substance. The world is already, independently of consciousness, an ordered system, and the function of consciousness is to produce in itself a counterpart or reflection of this order. But how does this formal consciousness come into connexion with its material? By what means does it retain and compare those phenomena in which the laws are expressed? It has, to begin with, nothing peculiarly its own, nothing by which it could enable the individual subject to distinguish himself from the individual phenomena presented, and thus to characterise and retain them. It is, in fact, to begin with, not there at all; but appears only after the lapse of time, as the gradual result of the action of the world on the individual subject. What then is the character of this action, and how does the result spring from it? The sole gateway of communication between the individual and the world is feeling or sensation. But feelings or sensations are, in themselves, momentary and perishable. They come and go, and tell of nothing beyond themselves, because to do so would not only imply the something beyond, of which they do tell, but also another something to which each makes its report, something which must have been there from the beginning, and could not therefore have been the result of the operation of an external agent. But before feelings can become known, that is, marked off from each other by dis