fishness of the observer's estimations. Sheep are providentially
designed for men; but why not also for wolves, and men for worms and
microbes? If the historian is willing to accept such a suggestion, and
to become a blind worshipper of success, applauding every issue, however
lamentable for humanity, and calling it admirable tragedy, he may seem
for a while to save his theory by making it mystical; yet presently this
last illusion will be dissipated when he loses his way in the maze and
finds that all victors perish in their turn and everything, if you look
far enough, falls back into the inexorable vortex. This is the sort of
observation that the Indian sages made long ago; it is what renders
their philosophy, for all its practical impotence, such an irrefragable
record of experience, such a superior, definitive perception of the
flux. Beside it, our progresses of two centuries and our philosophies of
history, embracing one-quarter of the earth for three thousand years,
seem puerile vistas indeed. Shall all eternity and all existence be for
the sake of what is happening here to-day, and to me? Shall we strive
manfully to the top of this particular wave, on the ground that its foam
is the culmination of all things for ever?

There is a sense, of course, in which definite political plans and moral
aspirations may well be fulfilled by events. Our ancestors, sharing and
anticipating our natures, may have had in many respects our actual
interests in view, as we may have those of posterity. Such ideal
co-operation extends far, where primary interests are concerned; it is
rarer and more qualified where a fine and fragile organisation is
required to support the common spiritual life. Even in these cases, the
aim pursued and attained is not the force that operates, since the
result achieved had many other conditions besides the worker's intent,
and that intent itself had causes which it knew nothing of. Every
"historical force" pompously appealed to breaks up on inspection into a
cataract of miscellaneous natural processes and minute particular
causes. It breaks into its mechanical constituents and proves to have
been nothing but an _effet d'ensemble_ produced on a mind whose habits
and categories are essentially rhetorical.

[Sidenote: A moral critique of the past is possible.]

This sort of false history or philosophy of history might be purified,
like so many other things, by self-knowledge. If the philosopher in
reviewin