Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/209

 The Sifted Grain and the Grain Sifters 1 99 For it others are far better qualified. I do not, therefore, propose to tell you of the St. Francis Xavier mission at Green Bay, or of Nicollet ; of Jacques Cartier, of Marquette or of Radisson, any more than of those two devoted benefactors and assiduous secreta- ries of this institution, Lyman C. Draper and Reuben G. Thwaites ; but, leaving them, and their deeds and services, to be com- memorated by those to the manner born, and, consequently, in every respect better qualified than I for the work, I propose to turn to more general subjects and devote the time allotted me to gener- alities, and to the future rather than to the past. In an address delivered about eighteen months ago before the Massachusetts Historical Society, I discussed in some detail the modern conception of history as compared with that which formerly prevailed. I do not now propose to repeat what I then said. It is sufficient for my present purpose to call attention to what we of the new school regard as the dividing line between us and the historians of the old school, the first day of October, 1859, — the date of the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species;" the book of his im- mediately preceding the " Descent of Man," from which my text for to-day was taken. On the first day of October, 1859, the Mosaic cosmogony finally gave place to the Darwinian theory of evolution. Under the new dispensation, based not on chance or an assumed supernatural revelation, but on a patient study of biology, that record of mankind known as history, no longer a mere succession of traditions and annals, has become a unified whole, — a vast scheme systematically developing to some result as yet not under- stood. Closely allied to astronomy, geology and physics, the study of modern history seeks a scientific basis from which the rise and fall of races and dynasties will be seen merely as phases of a con- secutive process of evolution, — the evolution of man from his initial to his ultimate state. When this conception was once reached, history, ceasing to be a mere narrative, made up of disconnected episodes having little or no bearing on each other, became a con- nected whole. To each development, each epoch, race and dynasty its proper place was to be assigned ; and to assign that place was the function of the historian. Formerly each episode was looked upon as complete in itself; and, being so, it had features more or less dramatic or instructive, and, for that reason, tempting to the historian, whether investigator or literary artist, — a Freeman or a Froude. Now, the first question the historian must put to himself relates to the proper adjustment of his particular theme to the en- tire plan, — he is shaping the fragment of a vast mosaic. The in- comparably greater portion of history has, it is needless to say,