e writers of history, without losing the
qualities which have made these men great, shall also utilize the new
facts and new methods which science has put at their disposal. Dryness
is not in itself a measure of value. No "scientific" treatise about
St. Louis will displace Joinville, for the very reason that
Joinville's place is in both history and literature; no minute study
of the Napoleonic wars will teach us more than Marbot--and Marbot is
as interesting as Walter Scott. Moreover, certain at least of the
branches of science should likewise be treated by masters in the art
of presentment, so that the layman interested in science, no less than
the layman interested in history, shall have on his shelves classics
which can be read. Whether this wish be or be not capable of
realization, it assuredly remains true that the great historian of the
future must essentially represent the ideal striven after by the great
historians of the past. The industrious collector of facts occupies an
honorable, but not an exalted, position, and the scientific historian
who produces books which are not literature must rest content with the
honor, substantial, but not of the highest type, that belongs to him
who gathers material which some time some great master shall arise to
use.

Yet, while freely conceding all that can be said of the masters of
literature, we must insist upon the historian of mankind working in
the scientific spirit, and using the treasure-houses of science. He
who would fully treat of man must know at least something of biology,
of the science that treats of living, breathing things; and
especially of that science of evolution which is inseparably connected
with the great name of Darwin. Of course there is no exact parallelism
between the birth, growth, and death of species in the animal world,
and the birth, growth, and death of societies in the world of man. Yet
there is a certain parallelism. There are strange analogies; it may be
that there are homologies.

How far the resemblances between the two sets of phenomena are more
than accidental, how far biology can be used as an aid in the
interpretation of human history, we cannot at present say. The
historian should never forget, what the highest type of scientific man
is always teaching us to remember, that willingness to admit ignorance
is a prime factor in developing wisdom out of knowledge. Wisdom is
advanced by research which enables us to add to knowledge; and