ABSTRACT
The Victorian skeptic and novelist Samuel Butler (1901/1920) once remarked “that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence” (p. 151). Butler’s sardonic observation emphasizes the historian’s selectivity. Inevitably, for reasons that are purely practical, the historian will omit certain facts. One unfortunate by-product of this pragmatic fact is that some omissions, though seemingly innocent, result in a failure to appreciate the contributions of certain people. In the history of the behavioral sciences, George Croom Robertson is such an important but neglected individual.
