s neither exclusively empirical nor exclusively speculative, but rather
a union of both in the process called Analysis or the Interpretation of
Facts, which has been defined as the application to facts of such general
conceptions as may fix the important characteristics of the phenomena,
and present them permanently in their true relations. He too was the
first to point out, what even in our own day is incompletely appreciated,
that nature, including the development of man, is not full of incoherent
episodes like a bad tragedy, that inconsistency and anomaly are as
impossible in the moral as they are in the physical world, and that where
the superficial observer thinks he sees a revolution the philosophical
critic discerns merely the gradual and rational evolution of the
inevitable results of certain antecedents.

And while admitting the necessity of a psychological basis for the
philosophy of history, he added to it the important truth that man, to be
apprehended in his proper position in the universe as well as in his
natural powers, must be studied from below in the hierarchical
progression of higher function from the lower forms of life. The
important maxim, that to obtain a clear conception of anything we must
'study it in its growth from the very beginning' is formally set down in
the opening of the Politics, where, indeed, we shall find the other
characteristic features of the modern Evolutionary theory, such as the
'Differentiation of Function' and the 'Survival of the Fittest'
explicitly set forth.

What a valuable step this was in the improvement of the method of
historical criticism it is needless to point out. By it, one may say,
the true thread was given to guide one's steps through the bewildering
labyrinth of facts. For history (to use terms with which Aristotle has
made us familiar) may be looked at from two essentially different
standpoints; either as a work of art whose [Greek] or final cause is
external to it and imposed on it from without; or as an organism
containing the law of its own development in itself, and working out its
perfection merely by the fact of being what it is. Now, if we adopt the
former, which we may style the theological view, we shall be in continual
danger of tripping into the pitfall of some a priori conclusion--that
bourne from which, it has been truly said, no traveller ever returns.

The latter is the only scientific theory and was apprehended in its
fulness by Arist