mparative method, occasionally the bringing to
light of new authorities--all contribute to an increase of real
knowledge, and historical studies in this respect do not differ from
other branches of research. But this is not the sole or the chief
cause of the renovation and transformation constantly needed in
historic work. That depends on the ever-moving standpoint from which
the past is regarded, so that society in looking back on its previous
history never sees it for long together at quite the same angle, never
sees, we may say, quite the same thing. The past changes to us as we
move down the stream of time, as a distant mountain changes through
the windings of the road on which we travel away from it. To drop
figure and use language now becoming familiar, the social organism is
in constant growth, and receiving new additions, and each new addition
causes us to modify our view of the whole. The historian, in fact, is
engaged in the study of an unfinished organism, whose development is
constantly presenting him with surprises. It is as if the biologist
were suddenly to come upon new and unheard-of species and families
which would upset his old classification, or as if the chemist were to
find his laws of combination replaced by others which were not only
unknown to him, but which were really new and recent in the world.
Other inquirers have the whole of the phenomena with which their
science is concerned before them, and they may explore them at their
leisure. The sociologist has only an instalment, most likely a very
small instalment, of the phenomena with which his science is
concerned before him. They have not yet happened, are not yet
phenomena, and as they do happen and admit of investigation they
necessarily lead to constant modification of his views and deductions.
Not only does he acquire new knowledge like other inquirers, but he is
constantly having the subject-matter from which he derives his
knowledge augmented. Even in modern times society has thrown out with
much suddenness rapid and unexpected developments, of such scope and
volume that contemporaries have often lost self-possession at the
sight of them, and wondered if social order could survive. The
Reformation and the French Revolution are cases in point. And what a
principal part do these two great events always play in any
speculations instituted subsequent to them! How easy it is to see
whether a writer lived before the Reign of Terror, or after it