The past changes to us as we
move down the stream of time, as a distant mountain changes through
the windings of the road on which we travel away from it. To drop
figure and use language now becoming familiar, the social organism is
in constant growth, and receiving new additions, and each new addition
causes us to modify our view of the whole. The historian, in fact, is
engaged in the study of an unfinished organism, whose development is
constantly presenting him with surprises. It is as if the biologist
were suddenly to come upon new and unheard-of species and families
which would upset his old classification, or as if the chemist were to
find his laws of combination replaced by others which were not only
unknown to him, but which were really new and recent in the world.
Other inquirers have the whole of the phenomena with which their
science is concerned before them, and they may explore them at their
leisure. The sociologist has only an instalment, most likely a very
small instalment, of the phenomena with which his science is
concerned before him. They have not yet happened, are not yet
phenomena, and as they do happen and admit of investigation they
necessarily lead to constant modification of his views and deductions.
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