THE NATURE AND SCOPE
responsible for the fact that the younger men have sometimes laid more stress on the economic fact than was necessary"; but this overemphasis, as he explained, arose from the exigencies of the debate into which their main contention precipitated them. It is not remarkable, therefore, that the Marxian interpretation of history should have failed to elucidate the means through which so different results have been arrived at in Asia and in Europe, in ancient and in modern times. The fault, if there be any, lies not with these great initiators who demonstrated the practical utility of an investigation of the elements of history, but with their successors who have failed to carry forward and to broaden the scope of the inquiries which they set on foot.
This theory, then, like those previously mentioned, is unacceptable as an explanation of how man has come to be as he is, for, itke the others, it is based upon a limited view of the facts, and represents a projection of a single factor upon the complexity of human experience. Practically speaking, the failure in all these cases has been duc to a lack of appreciation of the necessity of a preliminary study of method. To be acceptable, any such theory must be applicable to 'backward'
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