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HISTORY

OF

CIVILIZATION IN ENGLAND.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

STATEMENT OF THE RESOURCES FOR INVESTIGATING HISTORY, AND PROOFS OF THE REGULARITY OF HUMAN ACTIONS. THESE ACTIONS ARE GOVERNED BY MENTAL AND PHYSICAL LAWS: THEREFORE BOTH SETS OF LAWS MUST BE STUDIED, AND THERE CAN BE NO HISTORY WITHOUT THE NATURAL SCIENCES.

Of all the great branches of human knowledge, history is that upon which most has been written, and which has always been most popular. And it seems to be the general opinion that the success of historians has, on the whole, been equal to their industry; and that if on this subject much has been studied, much also is understood.

This confidence in the value of history is very widely diffused, as we see in the extent to which it is read, and in the share it occupies in all plans of education. Nor can it be denied that, in a certain point of view, such confidence is perfectly justifiable. It cannot be denied that materials have been collected which, when looked at in the aggregate, have a rich and imposing appearance. The political and military annals of all the great countries in Europe, and of most of those out of Europe, have been carefully compiled, put together in a convenient form, and the evidence on which they rest has been tolerably well sifted. Great attention has been paid to the history of legislation, also to that of religion: while considerable, though inferior, labour has been employed in tracing the progress of science, of literature, of the fine arts, of useful inventions, and, latterly, of the manners and comforts of the people. In order to increase our knowledge of the past, antiquities of every kind

VOL. I.-1

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have been examined; the sites of ancient cities have been laid
bare, coins dug up and deciphered, inscriptions copied, alphabets
restored, hieroglyphics interpreted, and, in some instances, long-
forgotten languages reconstructed and re-arranged. Several of
the laws which regulate the changes of human speech have been
discovered, and, in the hands of philologists, have been made to
elucidate even the most obscure periods in the early migration of
nations. Political economy has been raised to a science, and by
it much light has been thrown on the causes of that unequal dis-
tribution of wealth which is the most fertile source of social dis-
turbance. Statistics have been so sedulously cultivated, that
we have the most extensive information, not only respecting
the material interests of men, but also respecting their moral
peculiarities; such as, the amount of different crimes, the pro-
portion they bear to each other, and the influence exercised over
them by age, sex, education, and the like. With this great
movement physical geography has kept pace; the phenomena of
climate have been registered, mountains measured, rivers sur-
veyed and tracked to their source, natural productions of all
kinds carefully studied, and their hidden properties unfolded:
while every food which sustains life has been chemically ana-
lyzed, its constituents numbered and weighed, and the nature of
the connexion between them and the human frame has, in many
cases, been satisfactorily ascertained. At the same time, and
that nothing should be left undone which might enlarge our
knowledge of the events by which man is affected, there have
been instituted circumstantial researches in many other depart-
ments; so that in regard to the most civilized people, we are
now acquainted with the rate of their mortality, of their mar-
riages, the proportion of their births, the character of their em-
ployments, and the fluctuations both in their wages and in the
prices of the commodities necessary to their existence. These
and similar facts have been collected, methodized, and are ripe
for use.
Such results, which form, as it were, the anatomy of a
nation, are remarkable for their minuteness; and to them there
have been joined other results less minute, but more extensive.
Not only have the actions and characteristics of the great nations.
been recorded, but a prodigious number of different tribes in all
parts of the known world have been visited and described by
travellers, thus enabling us to compare the condition of mankind
in every stage of civilization, and under every variety of circum-
stance. When we moreover add, that this curiosity respecting
our fellow-creatures is apparently insatiable; that it is constant-
ly increasing; that the means of gratifying it are also increas-
ing, and that most of the observations which have been made

are still preserved ;-when we put all these things together, we may form a faint idea of the immense value of that vast body of facts which we now possess, and by the aid of which the progress of mankind is to be investigated.

But if, on the other hand, we are to describe the use that has been made of these materials, we must draw a very different picture. The unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man is, that although its separate parts have been examined with considerable ability, hardly any one has attempted to combine them into a whole, and ascertain the way in which they are connected with each other. In all the other great fields of inquiry, the necessity of generalization is universally admitted, and noble efforts are being made to rise from particular facts in order to discover the laws by which those facts are governed. So far, however, is this from being the usual course of historians, that among them a strange idea prevails, that their business is merely to relate events, which they may occasionally enliven by such moral and political reflections as seem likely to be useful. According to this scheme, any author who from indolence of thought, or from natural incapacity, is unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, has only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he is qualified to be an historian; he is able to write the history of a great people, and his work becomes an authority on the subject which it professes to treat.

The establishment of this narrow standard has led to results very prejudicial to the progress of our knowledge. Owing to it, historians, taken as a body, have never recognized the necessity of such a wide and preliminary study as would enable them to grasp their subject in the whole of its natural relations. Hence the singular spectacle of one historian being ignorant of political economy; another knowing nothing of law; another nothing of ecclesiastical affairs and changes of opinion; another neglecting the philosophy of statistics, and another physical science; although these topics are the most essential of all, inasmuch as they comprise the principal circumstances by which the temper and character of mankind have been affected, and in which they are displayed. These important pursuits being, however, cultivated, some by one man, and some by another, have been isolated rather than united the aid which might be derived from analogy and from mutual illustration has been lost; and no disposition has been shown to concentrate them upon history, of which they are, properly speaking, the necessary components.

Since the early part of the eighteenth century, a few great thinkers have indeed arisen, who have deplored the backwardness of history, and have done every thing in their power to remedy

it. But these instances have been extremely rare: so rare, that in the whole literature of Europe there are not more than three or four really original works which contain a systematic attempt to investigate the history of man according to those exhaustive methods which in other branches of knowledge have proved successful, and by which alone empirical observations can be raised to scientific truths.

Among historians in general, we find, after the sixteenth century, and especially during the last hundred years, several indications of an increasing comprehensiveness of view, and of a willingness to incorporate into their works subjects which they would formerly have excluded. By this means their assemblage of topics has become more diversified, and the mere collection and relative position of parallel facts has occasionally suggested generalizations no traces of which can be found in the earlier literature of Europe. This has been a great gain, in so far as it has familiarized historians with a wider range of thought, and encouraged those habits of speculation, which, though liable to abuse, are the essential condition of all real knowledge, because without them no science can be constructed.

But, notwithstanding that the prospects of historical literature are certainly more cheering now than in any former age, it must be allowed that, with extremely few exceptions, they are only prospects, and that as yet scarcely any thing has been done towards discovering the principles which govern the character and destiny of nations. What has been actually effected I shall endeavour to estimate in another part of this Introduction: at present it is enough to say, that for all the higher purposes of human thought history is still miserably deficient, and presents that confused and anarchical appearance natural to a subject of which the laws are unknown, and even the foundation unsettled.1

Our acquaintance with history being so imperfect, while our materials are so numerous, it seems desirable that something should be done on a scale far larger than has hitherto been attempted, and that a strenuous effort should be made to bring up this great department of inquiry to a level with other departments, in order that we may maintain the balance and harmony of our knowledge. It is in this spirit that the present work has been conceived. To make the execution of it fully equal to the

A living writer, who has done more than any other to raise the standard of history, contemptuously notices "l'incohérente compilation de faits déjà improprement qualifiée d'histoire." Comte, Philosophie Positive, vol. v. p. 18. There is much in the method and in the conclusions of this great work with which I cannot agree; but it would be unjust to deny its extraordinary merits.

conception is impossible: still I hope to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events analogous, to what has been effected by other inquirers for the different branches of natural science. In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained, and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This has been done because men of ability, and, 7 above all, men of patient, untiring thought, have studied natural events with the view of discovering their regularity and if human events were subjected to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results. For it is clear that they who affirm that the facts of history are incapable of being generalized, take for granted the very question at issue. Indeed they do more than this. They not only assume what they cannot prove, but they assume what in the present state of knowledge is highly improbable. Whoever is at all acquainted with what has been done during the last two centuries, must be aware that every generation demonstrates some events to be regular and predictable, which the preceding generation had declared to be irregular and unpredictable: so that the marked tendency of advancing civilization is to strengthen our belief in the universality of order, of method, and of law. This being the case, it follows that if any facts, or class of facts, have not yet been reduced to order, we, so far from pronouncing them to be irreducible, should rather be guided by our experience of the past, and should admit the probability that what we now call inexplicable will at some future time be explained. This expectation of discovering regularity in the midst of confusion is so familiar to scientific men, that among the most eminent of them it becomes an article of faith; and if the same expectation is not generally found among historians, it must be ascribed partly to their being of inferior ability to the investigators of nature, and partly to the greater complexity of those social phenomena with which their studies are concerned.

Both these causes have retarded the creation of the science" of history. The most celebrated historians are manifestly inferior to the most successful cultivators of physical science: no one having devoted himself to history who in point of intellect is at all to be compared with Kepler, Newton, or many others that might be named. And as to the greater complexity of the phenomena, the philosophic historian is opposed by difficulties far more formidable than is the student of nature; since, while

I speak merely of those who have made history their main pursuit. Bacon wrote on it, but only as a subordinate object; and it evidently cost him nothing like the thought which he devoted to other subjects.

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