N WEED

History is baffling in its complexity. The human mind instinctively
strives for simplicity, endeavors to reproduce all things to set rules,
to discover the basic principles upon which all action is based. And in
various lines of research much success has attended these efforts. We
know the laws underlying the movements of the planets, of various
chemical reactions, of plant and animal life. It is inevitable, then,
that attempts should be made to accomplish similar results in history,
to master the vast multitude of facts which crowd its pages, many of
them seemingly unrelated, and show that after all they obey certain
fundamental laws. Despite the vaunted freedom of the human will, it is
maintained, mankind like the planets or the chemical agents, cannot
escape the operation of definite forces to which it is subjected. And if
these forces are studied and understood, to some extent at least, the
course of future events may be predicted.

Thus it may be accepted as practically established that in any country
and with any people a condition of continued disorder and anarchy must
be succeeded by one of despotism. History records, we believe, no
exception to this rule, while there are many instances which tend to
confirm it. The absolute rule of the Caesars followed the anarchy of the
later Roman republic, the Oliverian Protectorate succeeded the British
civil wars, the first French Empire the Reign of Terror, the Bolshevik
despotism the collapse of the old regime in Russia. Such will always be
the case, we are told, because mankind turns instinctively to any form
of government in quest of protection from anarchy, and the easiest form
of government to establish and operate is despotism.

Not content with generalizations of this kind, however, certain
historians have undertaken to reduce all human action to some one great
fundamental principle. The Freudian view emphasizes the influence of
sex; Buckle maintains that the effect of climate is all-powerful. In
recent years many students, while not agreeing that the solution of the
problem is quite so simple, yet believe that underlying all social
development will be found economic forces of one kind or another, that
in commerce and industry and agriculture lies the key to every event of
moment in the history of mankind. Often these forces have been obscured
and misunderstood, but close study will always reveal them. It is folly
to waste time, they say, as writers hav