tarily, relate the course of past events to the
complex of effects which lies before us in the
present, and that we are constantly drawing
either special or general conclusions from the
past and making use of them in our task of
shaping the present with a view to the future.

Subjects which do not admit of such a rela-
tion to the present belong to the antiquarian,
and investigations which entirely and on prin-
ciple leave such considerations out of account
have value only for the virtuoso, or as work for
work's sake. Even when we employ the art,
so familiar to modern thinking, of tracing out
evolutionary series, we do so at bottom only
in order that we may be able to understand
the present itself in its place in such a series;
and when we follow the not less familiar
tendency to construct historical laws out of
these series, there lies in the background the
wish to insert the "particular" of the present
into the "general" of the whole course of
things, in order that both present and future
may be better understood.

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