HISTORY AND LOGIC
several such interpretations (his book does not do adequate justice to
his knowledge of many others) that though each may illuminate some
phase of the historical process, no one taken singly succeeds in account–
ing for the actual content and development of social institutions. His–
torical changes do not exhibit an organic unity, and the contingent
linkages of determining factors are the ground for alternative possibilities
of choice and action. Accordingly, the course of events does not il–
lustrate any inherent dialectic, whether divine or profane, and th6 his–
torical development of mankind is not an inexorable march toward
some predestined end.
And finally, the contemplation of the past reveals the defeat as
well as the victory of human ideals, and may thus serve as a basis for a
critique of contemporary assumptions both ethical and factual. Cohen
rejected as basically immoral Schiller's dictum that world-history is the
final court of ethical judgment, for he was keenly sensitive to the un–
requited sufferings of mankind and the tragic failures which attend so.
much noble human effort. Through intelligent action men are able
within limits to determine their destinies, but moral excellence is not
identical with the ability to survive. Accordingly, a mind that is gen–
uinely liberal will refuse its loyalty to mere force or power, and it will
not surrender its birthright of independent critical thought to what–
ever institutions or agencies happen to be dominant.
However, Cohen was generally more successful in exposing the
inadequacies of the ideas of others than in formulating precisely his
own conceptions; and in spite of the cogent and often moving eloquence
with which he argued for the disciplined use of reason in historical
study, he did not escape obscurity in his discu:osion of many crucial
issues. Two examples must suffice for this review. Cohen appears to
reject the Humean analysis of the causal relation (though the force of
his critique is open to serious doubt ), and to advance the counter-claim
that events genuinely connected causally possess something "identical"
in common and display an element of "logical necessity." Waiving the
problem whether the latter contention does not compromise Cohen's
thesis that the determining conditions of historical happenings are
contingent and plural, the obvious question to be put concerns the
specific nature of the alleged identity in causal transactions. For it is
almost trivially true that
any
two events, whether causally related 6r not,
share sorrie identical features. And though Cohen supplies a few illustra–
tions of what he means (e.g., he declares that the energy in the sun's
rays is identical with the energy by which chlorophyll transforms
in–
organic into organic compounds), they do not stand up under careful
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