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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 5, June 8th, 1949.

[Introduction]

Can there be a science of history? If not, why not? If so, has Arnold Toynbee, in his six-tome "Study of History" found it? A symposium consisting of Professor R. Parker, Dr. Peter Munz, and Mr. Harold Miller tried to clarify the minds of the Historical Society on these questions one evening at the end of last term. But as in all the purely academic societies in this college, no conclusion was reached.

Professor Parker gave a plain statement of Toynbeeism, Dr. Munz a mechanistic attack, and Mr. Miller a eulogistic apologia. Toynbee's theory of history cannot be stated fairly in a few lines, but let us do our best.

His historical unit—to the orthodox historian the "nation," to the Marxian a gradually developing whole-is the "civilization," a remarkably vague term which he can apply to the most heterogeneous collection of human aggregations. For example, he regards the Western and the Balkan civilizations as distinct units, and combines Greece and Rome in one?

Right, having named his term, without anywhere very adequately defining it, he proceeds to abstract laws of development from the facts of a hypothetical history divided into these units. First general law—that civilizations begin, grow and break down. Very good, they all have, so they all will. That goes for me loo. Thus we have the first concrete inference from Toynbeeism, for the present world—civilization is doomed? Toynbeeism is therefore firstly the historical philosophy of pessimism.

Now, how do civilizations rise, develop and break down? By the second law—"challenge and, response." Another vague term which can cover almost every factor in human progress. It seems to mean little more than "cause and effect." and might as well have been left unsaid. But this semi-dialectical "law." together with the third "law" which recognizes, in a cautious and fatalistic way, the existence of class division and conflict in all civilizations of the past, gives the key to where Toynbeeism comes from. It is Marx's shadow distorted. It is the conservative intelligentsia's answer to Marxism. But unfortunately it is not very satisfactory.

Harold Miller embraced Toynbeeism at once, for it places mind before matter, and sees religion as the most important factor in the shaping of human society. Methods of production have nothing to do with it.

Dr. Munz claimed that a general scientific view of history, as of anything, was impossible until we had command of all the facts. This statement is unfortunately contradicted by the history of every scientific hypothesis since Galileo, so I beg leave to ignore it. There Is no reason why we cannot abstract scientific laws of development from the history of human society as from any other subject—unless, of course, you believe that the world exists only in our senses, in which case you would jettison all science and stop eating.