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 have so long done, in setting forth the adventures of this great man or that, in dwelling upon the details of political struggles or recounting the horrors of war. All these are but surface indications of the deeper movements underneath, movements in every case brought about by economic developments. But this interpretation of history is by no means universally accepted. While admitting readily that the conditions surrounding the production and exchange of useful commodities have affected profoundly the course of events, many historians deny that they give the key to every important movement. We must study also the progress of human thought, of religion, of politics, or our conception of history will be warped and imperfect. How is it possible to explain the French religious wars of the Sixteenth century by the theory of economic causes? In what way does it account for the rebellion of Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland against the British government in 1775? How can one deny that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln affected profoundly the course of American history? These efforts to simplify the meaning of human events have often led to error, have stressed certain events too strongly, have minimized others. The complexity of history is self-evident; we must for the present at least content ourselves with complex interpretations of it. If there be any great underlying principles which explain all, they have yet to be discovered.