the conditions of human life, social conditions, forms of law and the
state with their idealistic superstructure of philosophy, religion,
art, etc., in their historic succession and in their present day
manifestations. In organic nature we have at least to do with a
succession of regular phenomena which regularly repeat themselves as
far as our immediate observation goes, within very wide limits.
Organic species have remained on the whole unaltered since the time of
Aristotle. In social history, on the other hand, repetitions of
conditions are the exception, not the rule, directly we leave behind
the prehistoric conditions of humanity, the stone-age, so-called.
Where such repetitions do occur, moreover, they never recur under
precisely similar conditions, as for example the occurrence of early
tribal communism among all peoples anterior to civilisation and the
form of its break up. As regards human history, then, as far as
science is concerned, we are at a greater disadvantage than in
biology. Furthermore, when the intimate relations existing between a
social and political phenomenon come to be recognised it is not, as a
rule, perceived until the conditions are actually on the way to decay.
Knowledge is therefore entirely relative, since it is limited to a
given people and a given epoch, and their nature under transitory
social and political forms, when it examines relations and forms
conclusions. He who therefore is after final truths of last instance,
pure and immutable, will only manage to catch flat phrases and the
most arrant commonplaces, like these--man cannot, generally speaking,
live without working; up to the present men have for the most part
been divided into masters and servants; Napoleon died on May 5th,
1821, and things of that sort.

It is worth noting that in this department of knowledge pretended
final truths of last instance are met with most frequently. Only the
person who wishes to show that there are eternal truth, eternal
morality, and eternal justice in human history, and that these are
similar in scope and application to those of mathematics, will
proclaim that twice two is four and that birds have beaks and the like
to be eternal truths. We can also certainly rely upon the same friend
of humanity taking the opportunity to explain that all former
inventors of eternal truths have been more or less asses or
charlatans, that they have been circumscribed by error and have made
mistakes. The fact o