ABSTRACT
In practice, history can be 'explained', after a certain style, without any acceptance of determinism, and without insuperable difficulties in finding sets of materials which will compose into an ordered structure. Theory can give unity and structure to small portions of history, each on its own, but not to the vast, intricate flow of things taken as a whole. Alfred Marshall's endeavour was to explain the typical modes of contemporary industrial history in the small. His pragmatic, short-range, non-determinist attitude implies that if explanation and prediction are indeed the same, then prediction as well as explanation must be free to select and interpret the set of 'facts' which it will use. In its modest and pragmatic aims, Marshall's method evidently differs totally from the great determinist systems. But it would be well for all theoreticians to ask themselves sometimes what is the kind of world-picture which their particular constructions pre-suppose.
