Between them they have, for that matter, excavated enough material to found a Science of Civilisation as true as gravitation, and as solid in its principles as the theory of the tides; but each is still inclined to rule out of its purview the results of the others as impediments, negations, delusions, or downright perversions of the truth; except, perhaps, in the case of the theologians and politicians, who having to deal with practical affairs demanding urgency, have been forced to co-operate, and, under that necessity which makes strange bedfellows, to lie down unwillingly together! Instead of each calling on its neighbour for help in its difficulties, as the Physical Sciences do, each digs on patiently in its own particular trench, jealously exclusive of the rest, and receiving their proffered help with a curse rather than a blessing. The Theologians repudiate the conclusions of the Physical Scientists; the Metaphysicians of the Psychologists; and the Sociologists of both. The Statesmen, thinking they can see how the world goes, merely by looking at it through the key-hole of To-day, throw overboard the Historians and the Philosophers indifferently as pedants or dreamers, only to be hooked themselves later on by the cheap bait of some Rousseau, with his Utopian dream of abstract equality, or by the Laissez-faire doctrine of the Political Economists, as if the world were born but yesterday; while the Economists themselves, ignoring alike Morality, History, and Sociology, continue to hug all the more closely their pasteboard "economic man." The consequence is that these specialisms, instead of advancing like an army on the march under the supreme direction of a general Science of Civilisation to coordinate and harmonise them, go each its own way, indifferent to the rest, breeding in and in on themselves the farther they go, until in the end, like bacteria, they choke themselves in their own excess; or when all hope of producing anything human or practically useful is resigned, turn scavengers pure and simple, and like white ants, live on the debris of the dead or dying superstitions which it is their function to remove.

Little groups of them will be found, especially in Germany, squatting themselves down here or there on some small patch of history, say of ten years' duration, it matters little where or when, and will dig and delve you it until not a scrap of fact is left unexhausted; anatomising it as if it were a dead body, but with little conception of the general trend of the great forces, political, economical, and social, that played through it from the outside, and which gave these dead facts all the meaning and importance they had when alive. Now on this point I may claim to speak with some authority, for as it has been my life's task to try and work out for myself some such general scheme of Civilisation as I have indicated, I have had to make myself acquainted not only with the principles of each of these specialisms, but with all details of importance as well. And I can truly say that I have been condemned to read dozens of books on the History of Philosophy, of Early Christianity, and of the Middle Ages, and at least some scores on General History and Political Economy, besides innumerable special monographs, and (with the exception of the works of the few leading authorities on these subjects), without coming on any single new principle, and on hardly a new and important fact.

So great is the waste and futility of these specialisms when not controlled and directed by some general Science of Civilisation as a whole!

It is true that there had long been in existence a number of schemes of Civilisation, and these, too, the products of some of the greatest constructive minds of the century - Hegel, Guizot, Comte, Buckle, and Herbert Spencer. But they all suffered inevitably from defects which rendered them imperfect or nugatory. To begin with, they were all premature; the last of them having been written nearly half a century ago when the specialists of the different departments had not yet excavated sufficient raw material of fact on which these great thinkers could successfully operate. Then again, they either, like Guizot and Buckle, covered only a limited portion of the field; or like Hegel and Spencer made Civilisation depend on laws so general and abstract that they were better fitted to explain the evolution of solar systems than to serve as guides to the specialisms dealing with the complex civilisation of man. And worse still, they almost all fell into the error of the specialists themselves, of investing one or other factor with 'positive importance and efficiency, and degrading the rest to the rank of mere appendages, or even downright obstructions and negations - Hegel making the philosophical factor all, Comte (in his later works) the religious one, Buckle the scientific, and Herbert Spencer the purely physical one of the conservation of energy; to whom may be added Carlyle, with his apotheosis of the personally heroic and of brute force; the best and most fruitful of all these systems being still, in spite of much gratuitous neglect, the great work of Comte. Now to all these men, owing to their breadth, penetration, and originality, I was deeply indebted; but as the real problem, namely that of determining the part played by all the factors as they roll down the centuries together, and of binding them into a living unity, was still imperfectly solved, I was myself impelled, poorly equipped as 1 was, to attempt it; and some account of the difficulties I met with in this attempt will give the reader a better idea of just how these specialisms stand, than a volume of abstract dissertation.