the school, as, for instance, Buckle's introduction to his history of civilization or Bourdeau's book on the _Histoire des historiens?_ These and similar positivistic doctrines are present to the memory, either because they are nearest to us chronologically, or because the echo of the noise they made in the world has not yet ceased, and we see everywhere traces of their influence. Everywhere we see it, and above all in the prejudice which they have solidly established (and which we must patiently corrode and dissolve), that history, true history, is to be constructed by means of the _naturalistic_ method, and that _causal_ induction should be employed. Then there are the manifold naturalistic conceptions with which they have imbued modern thought: race, heredity, degeneration, imitation, influence, climate, historical factors, and so forth. And here, too, as in the case of the philosophies of history, since it suffices us to select only the essential in each fact, we shall not dwell upon the various particular forms of it--that is to say, upon the various modes in which historical causes were enunciated and enumerated, and upon the various claims that one or other of them was supreme: now the race, now the climate, now economy, now technique, and so forth. Here, too, the study of the particular forms would be of use to anyone who wished to develop in particular the dialectic and to trace the internal dissolution of that school, to demonstrate in its particular modes its intrinsic tendency to surpass itself, though it failed to do so by that path.