It appears to me just as teleologic and divinatory as those I have previously named. It assumes Evolution as a law of the universe, whereas in natural science it is only a limited generalization, inapplicable to most series of natural events, and therefore of uncertain continuance in any series. The optimism which it inculcates is insecure and belongs to deductive, not inductive, reasoning. The mechanical theory on which it is based lacks proof, and is, I maintain, insufficient to explain motive, and, therefore, historic occurrences. The assumption that history is the record of a necessary and uninterrupted evolution, progressing under ironclad mechanical laws, is a preconceived theory as detrimental to clear vision as are the preoccupations of the theologian or the political partisan. Any definition of evolution which carries with it the justification of optimism is as erroneous in history, as it would be in biology to assert that all variations are beneficial. There is no more certainty that the human species will improve under the operation of physical laws than that any individual will; there is far more evidence that it will not, as every species of the older geologic ages has succumbed to those laws, usually without leaving a representative. I am aware that I am here in opposition to the popular as well as the scientific view. No commonplace is better received than that, "Eternal progress is the law of nature;" though by what process eternal laws are discovered is imperfectly explained. Applied to history, a favorite dream of some of the most recent teachers is that the life of the species runs the same course as that of one of its members. Lord Acton, of Oxford, in a late lecture states that: "The development of society is like that of individual;"[8-1] and Prof. Fellows, of the University of Chicago, advances the same opinion in the words, "Humanity as a whole developes[TN-2] like a child."[8-2] The error of this view was clearly pointed out some years ago by Dr. Tobler.[8-3] There has been no growth of humanity at large at all comparable to that of the individual. There are tribes to-day in the full stone age, and others in all stages of culture above it. The horizons of progress have been as local as those of geography. No solidarity of advancement exists in the species as a whole. Epochs and stadia of culture vary with race and climate. The much talked of "law of continuity" does not hold good either in national or intellectual growth.