physiological processes seen in the biological domain. It is conceived to be physiological after the Hegelian manner of conceiving a physiological process, which is, however, not the same as the modern scientific conception of a physiological process.[4] Since this quasi-physiological process of cultural development is conceived to be an unfolding of the self-realising human spirit, whose life history it is, it is of the nature of the case that the cultural process should run through a certain sequence of phases--a certain life history prescribed by the nature of the active, unfolding spiritual substance. The sequence is determined on the whole, as regards the general features of the development, by the nature of life on the human plane. The history of cultural growth and decline necessarily repeats itself, since it is substantially the same human spirit that seeks to realise itself in every comprehensive sequence of cultural development, and since this human spirit is the only factor in the case that has substantial force. In its generic features the history of past cultural cycles is, therefore, the history of the future. Hence the importance, not to say the sole efficacy for economic science, of an historical scrutiny of culture. A well-authenticated sequence of cultural phenomena in the history of the past is conceived to have much the same binding force for the sequence of cultural phenomena in the future as a "natural law," as the term has been understood in physics or physiology, is conceived to have as regards the course of phenomena in the life history of the human body; for the onward cultural course of the human spirit, actively unfolding by inner necessity, is an organic process, following logically from the nature of this self-realising spirit. If the process is conceived to meet with obstacles or varying conditions, it adapts itself to the circumstances in any given case, and it then goes on along the line of its own logical bent until it eventuates in the consummation given by its own nature. The environment, in this view, if it is not to be conceived simply as a function of the spiritual force at work, is, at the most, of subsidiary and transient consequence only. Environmental conditions can at best give rise to minor perturbations; they do not initiate a cumulative sequence which can profoundly affect the outcome or the ulterior course of the cultural process. Hence the sole, or almost sole, importance of historical inquiry in determining the laws of cultural development, economic or other.