has been followed. To prove this in its full extent, and thus raise the presumption to an absolute certainty, would be to write, not an Introduction to history, but the History itself. The reader must, therefore, be satisfied for the present with what, I am conscious, is merely an approach towards demonstration; and the complete demonstration must necessarily be reserved for the future volumes of this work in which I pledge myself to show that the progress Europe has made from barbarism to civilization is entirely due to its intellectual activity; that the leading countries have now, for some centuries, advanced sufficiently far to shake off the influence of those physical agencies by which in an earlier state their career might have been troubled; and that although the moral agencies are still powerful, and still cause occasional disturbances, these are but aberrations, which, if we compare long periods of time, balance each other, and thus in the total amount entirely disappear. So that, in a great and comprehensive view, the changes in every civilized people are, in their aggregate, dependent solely on three things: first, on the amount of knowledge possessed by their ablest men; secondly, on the direction which that knowledge takes, that is to say, the sort of subjects to which it refers; thirdly, and above all, on the extent to which the knowledge is diffused, and the freedom with which it pervades all classes of society.

These are the three great movers of every civilized country; and although their operation is frequently disturbed by the vices or the virtues of powerful individuals, such moral feelings correct each other, and the average of long periods remain unaffected. Owing to causes of which we are ignorant, the moral qualities do, no doubt, constantly vary; so that in one man, or perhaps even in one generation, there will be an excess of good intentions, in another an excess of bad ones. But we have no reason to think that any permanent change has been effected in the proportion which those who naturally possess good intentions bear to those in whom bad ones seem to be inherent. In what may be called the innate and original morals of mankind, there is, so far as we are aware, no progress. Of the different passions with which we are born, some are more prevalent at one time, some at another; but experience teaches us that, as they are always antagonistic, they are held in balance by the force of their own opposition. The activity of one motive is corrected by the activity of another. For to every vice there is a corresponding virtue. Cruelty is counteracted by benevolence; sympathy is excited by suffering; the injustice of some provokes the charity of others; new evils are met by new remedies, and even the most enormous offences that have ever been known have left behind them no permanent

impression. The desolation of countries and the slaughter of men are losses which never fail to be repaired, and at the distance of a few centuries every vestige of them is effaced. The gigantic crimes of Alexander or Napoleon become after a time void of effect, and the affairs of the world return to their former level. This is the ebb and flow of history, the perpetual flux to which by the laws of our nature we are subject. Above all this, there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now advancing, now receding, there is, amid its endless fluctuations, one thing, and one alone, which endures for ever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions. All these have their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. They pass away like a dream; they are as the fabric of a vision, which leaves not a rack behind. The discoveries of genius alone remain: it is to them we owe all that we now have, they are for all ages and all times; never young, and never old, they bear the seeds of their own life; they flow on in a perennial and undying stream; they are essentially cumulative, and giving birth to the additions which they subsequently receive, they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation.

CHAPTER V.

INQUIRY INTO THE INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND GOVERNMENT.

By applying to the history of Man those methods of investigation which have been found successful in other branches of knowledge, and by rejecting all preconceived notions which would not bear the test of those methods, we have arrived at certain results, the heads of which it may now be convenient to recapitulate. We have seen that our actions, being solely the result of internal and external agencies, must be explicable by the laws of those agencies; that is to say, by mental laws and by physical laws. We have also seen that mental laws are, in Europe, more powerful than physical laws; and that, in the progress of civilization, their superiority is constantly increasing, because advancing knowledge multiplies the resources of the mind, but leaves the old resources of nature stationary. On this account, we have treated the mental laws as being the great regulators of progress; and we have looked at the physical laws as occupying a subordinate place, and as merely displaying themselves in occasional disturbances, the force and frequency of which have been long declining, and are now, on a large average, almost inoperative. Having, by this means, resolved the study of what may be called the dynamics of society into the study of the laws of the mind, we have subjected these last to a similar analysis; and we have found that they consist of two parts, namely, moral laws and intellectual laws. By comparing these two parts, we have clearly ascertained the vast superiority of the intellectual laws; and we have seen, that as the progress of civilization is marked by the triumph of the mental laws over the physical, just so is it marked by the triumph of the intellectual laws over the moral ones. This important inference rests on two distinct arguments. First, that moral truths being stationary, and intellectual truths being progressive, it is highly improbable that the progress of society

should be due to moral knowledge, which for many centuries has remained the same, rather than to intellectual knowledge, which for many centuries has been incessantly advancing. The other argument consists in the fact, that the two greatest evils known to mankind have not been diminished by moral improvement; but have been, and still are, yielding to the influence of intellectual discoveries. From all this it evidently follows, that if we wish to ascertain the conditions which regulate the progress of modern civilization, we must seek them in the history of the amount and diffusion of intellectual knowledge; and we must consider physical phenomena and moral principles as causing, no doubt, great aberrations in short periods, but in long periods correcting and balancing themselves, and thus leaving the intellectual laws to act uncontrolled by these inferior and subordinate agents.

Such is the conclusion to which we have been led by successive analyses, and on which we now take our stand. The actions of individuals are greatly affected by their moral feelings and by their passions; but these being antagonistic to the passions and feelings of other individuals, are balanced by them; so that their effect is, in the great average of human affairs, nowhere to be seen; and the total actions of mankind, considered as a whole, are left to be regulated by the total knowledge of which mankind. is possessed. And of the way in which individual feeling and individual caprice are thus absorbed and neutralized, we find a clear illustration in the facts already brought forward respecting the history of crime. For by those facts it is decisively proved, that the amount of crime committed in a country is, year after year, reproduced with the most startling uniformity, not being in the least affected by those capricious and personal feelings to which human actions are too often referred. But if, instead of examining the history of crime year by year, we were to examine it month by month, we should find less regularity; and if we were to examine it hour by hour, we should find no regularity at all; neither would its regularity be seen, if, instead of the criminal records of a whole country, we only knew those of a single street, or of a single family. This is because the great social laws by which crime is governed, can only be perceived after observing great numbers or long periods; but in a small number, and a short period, the individual moral principle triumphs, and disturbs the operation of the larger and intellectual law. While, therefore, the moral feelings by which a man is urged to commit a crime, or to abstain from it, will produce an immense effect on the amount of his own crimes, they will produce no effect on the amount of crimes committed by the society to which he belongs;

because, in the long-run, they are sure to be neutralized by opposite moral feelings, which cause in other men an opposite conduct. Just in the same way, we are all sensible that moral principles do affect nearly the whole of our actions; but we have incontrovertible proof that they produce not the least effect on mankind in the aggregate, or even on men in very large masses, provided that we take the precaution of studying social phenomena for a period sufficiently long, and on a scale sufficiently great, to enable the superior laws to come into uncontrolled operation.

The totality of human actions being thus, from the highest point of view, governed by the totality of human knowledge, it might seem a simple matter to collect the evidence of the knowledge, and, by subjecting it to successive generalizations, ascertain the whole of the laws which regulate the progress of civilization. And that this will be eventually done, I do not entertain the slightest doubt. But, unfortunately, history has been written by men so inadequate to the great task they have undertaken, that few of the necessary materials have yet been brought together. Instead of telling us those things which alone have any value, instead of giving us information respecting the progress of knowledge, and the way in which mankind has been affected by the diffusion of that knowledge, instead of these things, the vast majority of historians fill their works with the most trifling and miserable details: personal anecdotes of kings and courts; interminable relations of what was said by one minister, and what was thought by another; and, what is worse than all, long accounts of campaigns, battles, and sieges, very interesting to those engaged in them, but to us utterly useless, because they neither furnish new truths, nor do they supply the means by which new truths may be discovered. This is the real impediment which now stops our advance. It is this want of judgment, and this ignorance of what is most worthy of selection, which deprives us of materials that ought long since to have been accumulated, arranged, and stored-up for future use. In other great branches of knowledge, observation has preceded discovery; first the facts have been registered, and then their laws have been found. But in the study of the history of Man, the important facts have been neglected, and the unimportant ones preserved. The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize historical phenomena, must collect the facts, as well as conduct the generalization. He finds nothing ready to his hand. He must be the mason as well as the architect; he must not only scheme the edifice, but likewise excavate the quarry. The necessity of performing this double labour entails upon the philosopher such enormous drudgery, that the limits