Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/502

498 ocean. A man may raise himself above the level a moment but sinks back, having affected the whole so little that the historian can eliminate the free-will acts of individuals and treat only the life history of generic man. "The new direction of historical investigation," says Professor Lamprecht, the leader of this movement, "has first brought pure causality into history, because it seeks to prove the causal coherence of the generic life of man, and does not confine itself to the deeds of eminent men." It is not to be denied that such an historical hypothesis has value, but it is one-sided and, as far as our knowledge goes, is but half a truth.

It has been already shown that from the nature of the subject matter, history is concerned with the particular rather than the general. It is the personal act amidst the almost never changing activities of the masses that interests us. This personal act, however, is an unknown quantity in every generation. The generic man is but an average of the community, within which there are numerous variations, just as is found by the naturalist among the individuals of any species of animals. These variations are not due wholly to the physical and psychical environment, but come partly from the accidents of birth, which the historian can not trace to their first cause. The forces which are to produce historical movements are not existent except in the souls of these individuals of which the average of any given community would take no account. The social psychic environment will affect and develop these variants in different ways, and the sum total of these variations will give rise to historical phenomena which would not be perceived in the external causes acting on the community.

After the fact we can know the effect, but why there was that particular effect instead of many possible others escapes our search. Within the zone where past tradition meets present variations, we can not follow the intricate working of forces. In the last analysis, therefore, an important cause of historical phenomena lies in the soul of the individual and must be sought in his variations from the multitude, a mystery locked in the secret chambers of the germ cell, in his relation to the past, which constantly changes with the person, in his motives of action, which can not be massed with those of his fellows. Infinite knowledge may follow amidst the complex mingling of will and will, desire and desire, of the millions of individuals the line of cause and effect, but man with human intelligence stands in the presence of any generation as before the entrance of a dark cavern into whose innermost recesses his eyes can not penetrate.

The higher the civilization the greater these variations from the average. Savages are much more similar psychically than the more civilized, just as plants conform to the type closer in the natural state