onduct_. It deals, in other words, with actions which serve
interests; with needs, desires, and purposes as these are fulfilled or
thwarted in the course of time. Its subject-matter, therefore, is
moral. It describes the clash of interests, the failure or success of
ambition, the improvement or decay of nations; in short, all things
good and evil in so far as they have been achieved and recorded. And
the broader the scope of the historian's study the more clearly do
these moral principles emerge. The present-day emphasis on the
accurate verification of data somewhat obscures, but does not negate
the fact, that every item of detail is in the end brought under some
judgment of good or evil, of gain or loss in human welfare. All
history is virtually a history of civilization; and civilization is a
moral conception referring to the sum of human achievement in so far as
this is pronounced good.

Now there is a branch of philosophy called {125} "ethics," to which is
committed the investigation of moral conceptions. These conceptions
are as much subject to exact analysis as conceptions of motion or
organic behavior. And such an analysis must underlie all judgments
concerning the condition of mankind in any time or place, if these
judgments make any claim to truth. The application of ethical analysis
to the recorded life of man is a philosophy of history.[1] Such a
discipline is charged with the criticism of the past in terms of
critical principles which have been explicitly formulated. With a
knowledge of what it means to be good or evil one may conclude in all
seriousness whether the fortunes of society in any time or place were
good or evil. One may with meaning distinguish between those who have
been the friends and the enemies of society; and one may refer to the
growth or decay of nations with some notion of what these terms
signify. But it will be the main problem of a philosophy of history to
deliver some verdict concerning the progress or decline of
institutions, and of civilization at large.

It is necessary that we should at once rid our minds of false notions
concerning the meaning of _progress_. This conception has been greatly
confused during recent times through being identified with evolution in
the biological sense. It should be perfectly clear that such evolution
may or {126} may not be progressive; it means only a continuous
modification of life in accordance with the demands of the environmen