The foregoing considerations, elementary and incomplete as they are, suggest that there is a strong prima facie case for rejecting the common conceptions that man is among animals the least endowed with an inheritance of instinct, and that civilization has produced in him profound modifications in his primitive instinctive impulses. If the conception which I have put forward be correct, namely, that man is not at all less subject to instinctive impulsions than any other animal but disguises the fact from the observer and from himself by the multiplicity of the lines of response his mental capacity enables him to take, it should follow that his conduct is much less truly variable and much more open to generalization than has generally been supposed. Should this be possible, it would enable the biologist to study the actual affairs of mankind in a really practical way, to analyse the tendencies of social development, to discover how deeply or superficially they were based in the necessity of things, and above all, to foretell their course. Thus might be founded a true science of politics which would be of direct service to the statesman. Many attempts have been made to apply biological principles to the interpretation of history and the guidance of statecraft, especially since the popularization of the principles associated with the name of Darwin. Such attempts have generally been undertaken less in the spirit of the scientific {100} investigator than in that of the politician; the point of departure has been a political conviction and not a biological truth; and as might be expected, when there has been any conflict between political conviction and biological truth it is the latter that has had to give way. Work of this kind has brought the method into deserved contempt by its crudity, its obvious subservience to prejudice, and its pretentious gestures of the doctrinaire. England has not been without her examples of these scientific politicians and historians, but they cannot be said to have flourished here as they have in the more scholastic air of Germany. The names of several such are now notorious in this country and their works are sufficiently familiar for it to be obvious that their claims to scientific value do not admit of discussion. It is not necessary to consider their conclusions, they are condemned by their manner; and however interesting their political vociferation may be to fellow-patriots, it plainly has no meaning whatsoever as science. In face of the spectacle presented by these leather-lunged doctrinaires, it needs some little hardihood to maintain that it is possible profitably to apply biological principle to the consideration of human affairs; nevertheless, that is an essential thesis of this essay.