Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/498

494 propositions and on the historical possibility of their being true when applied to the conditions of a society of the past. Again the certainty of the result will depend on the assurance that the historian has discovered all the conditions, and this will always remain an open question. The reverse process, so popular with sociologists and psychologists, is also of some service. By the collection of the data of individual acts and striking an average, the personal volitional element can be approximately eliminated, and the residue over and above the probable conduct reveals a partial cause of the activities of the masses. Besides the meager data which the past affords and the impossibility of sending elaborate questionnaires to past generations, both of which facts hinder the use of this method, the results reached by such means show only the general tendency, the probable action, and not the particular acts and motives which form such a prominent feature of history.

The true method of history would seem to be the canon of concomitant variations; but unfortunately there is no invariable measure, as in the physical sciences, by which variations can be mathematically determined. All elements of social life vary continually. If we select one as a measure for all, we may be using that which is most variable and certainly one of the causes of variations in other elements of society. In fact a social yard-stick is wanting. In the study of primitive society this canon has been employed successfully because of the large number of similar phenomena, both past and present, but it fails to satisfy the needs of the historian of a civilized people.

By this hasty review of the canons of inductive reasoning, it is seen that only two, and these the least desirable, can be employed by the historian, and then with very material limitations. History is not a science of pure induction and never can be. The facts of history could never be joined into causal relations by induction alone. If there were no other means, history would remain chronology.

How then can causal relations be established by the historian? The answer is: "By deductive and teleological reasoning, for the most part by the latter."

The past illustrates the operation of the laws which have been established by the social sciences. The method of deduction can be employed in cases where individual volition can be eliminated, where causes psychological or economic affect large masses of individuals, bringing about important historical changes. In tracing economic development and social psychic life this method establishes causes which satisfy the mind and a large mass of historical knowledge is thus removed from the charge of uncertainty.

As a rule, however, the historian's view of the past is teleological. We are obliged to pass from effect to cause just as we do when reviewing our own lives. Knowing the end reached by human society at any period, we trace back the events which have been the means of bringing