Biology and history / C.W. Saleeby.

  • Saleeby, C. W. (Caleb Williams), 1878-1940.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Biology and history / C.W. Saleeby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ( BIOLOGY AND HISTOBY You will not expect me to insult you this evening with any dis¬ cussion of the garbage and gossip, records of scoundrels and courts and battles, murder and theft, which we were taught at school under the name of History. If history be, as nearly all historians have conceived it, and as Gibbon defined it, “ little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind,” it is an empty and contemptible study, save for the social pathologist. But if history, without by any means ignoring great men or underrating their influence, is, or should be, the record of the past life of man¬ kind, of progress and decadence, the rise and fall of empires and civilisations, and their mutual reactions; if it be the record of the intermittent ascent of man, “ sagging but pertinacious ” ; if this record be subject to the law of causation, and therefore susceptible, in theory at least, of explanation as well as description ; if its factors are at work to-day, and will shape the destiny of all the to-morrows ; if it be neither phantasmagoria, nor panorama, nor pageant, nor pro¬ cession, but process—in short, an organic drama—then, indeed, it is a supreme study. Especially must it appeal to us, who boast a tradi¬ tion greater than the world has ever yet seen, and kinship with men who represent the utmost of which the human spirit has yet shown itself capable—who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but to whom the names of all our imperial predecessors, from Babylon to Spain, serve as a perpetual memento mori. My special question, this evening, is whether there are inherent and necessary reasons why our predecessors’ fate must sooner or later be ours ? Must races die ?—or, if we are sceptical about races, and more especially about the so-called Anglo-Saxon race, must civilisations, states or nations die ? Nations, races, civilisations rise, we shall all agree, because to in¬ herent virtue of breed they add sound customs and laws, acquirements of discipline and knowledge. But, these acquirements made, power