to relate the reigns of six emperors in two lines,133 but he constantly enforces the necessity, even in the case of eminent men, of subordinating their special influence to the more general influence of the surrounding society. Thus, many writers had ascribed the ruin of the Roman Republic to the ambition of Cæsar and Pompey, and particularly to the deep schemes of Cæsar. This, Montesquieu totally denies. According to his view of history, no great alteration can be effected, except by virtue of a long train of antecedents, where alone we are to seek the cause of what to a superficial eye is the work of individuals. The republic, therefore, was overthrown, not by Cæsar and Pompey, but by that state of things which made the success of Cæsar and Pompey possible.134 It is thus that the events which ordinary historians relate, are utterly valueless. Such events, instead of being causes, are merely the occasions on which the real causes act.135 They may be called the accidents of history; and they must be treated as subservient to those vast and comprehensive conditions, by which alone the rise and fall of nations are ultimately governed. 136

This, then, was the first great merit of Montesquieu, that he effected a complete separation between biography and history, and taught historians to study, not the peculiarities of individual character, but the general aspect of the society in which the peculiarities appeared. If this remarkable man had accomplished nothing further, he would have rendered an incalculable service to history, by pointing out how one of its most fertile sources of error might be safely removed. And although, unhappily, we have not yet reaped the full benefit of his example, this is because his successors have rarely had the capacity of rising to so high a generalization: it is, however, certain, that since his time, an approximation towards such elevated views may be noticed, even among those inferior writers who, for want of sufficient grasp, are unable to adopt them to their full extent.

133 He says of the emperor Maximin, "il fut tué avec son fils par ses soldats. Les deux premiers Gordiens périrent en Afrique. Maxime, Balbin, et le troisième Gordien furent massacrés." Grandeur et Décadence des Romains, chap. xvi., in

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Euvres de Montesquieu, p. 167. 134 Ibid. chap. xi., in Œuvres de Montesquieu, pp. 149-153. Compare a similar remark, respecting Charles XII., in Esprit des Lois, livre x. chap. xiii., Euvres, p. 260. 135 On the difference between cause and occasion, see Grandeur et Décad. chap. i. p. 126.

136 "Il y a des causes générales, soit morales, soit physiques, qui agissent dans chaque monarchie, l'élèvent, la maintiennent, ou la précipitent; tous les accidents sont soumis à ces causes; et si le hasard d'une bataille, c'est-à-dire une cause particulière, a ruiné un état, il y avoit une cause générale qui faisoit que cet état, devoit périr par une seule bataille. En un mot, l'allure principale entraîne avec elle tous les accidents particuliers." Grand. et Décad. des Romains, chap. xviii. p. 172.

In addition to this, Montesquieu made another great advance in the method of treating history. He was the first who, in an inquiry into the relations between the social conditions of a country and its jurisprudence, called in the aid of physical knowledge, in order to ascertain how the character of any given civilization is modified by the action of the external world. In his work on the Spirit of Laws, he studies the way in which both the civil and political legislation of a people are naturally connected with their climate, soil, and food.137 It is true, that in this vast enterprise he almost entirely failed; but this was because meteorology, chemistry, and physiology, were still too backward to admit of such an undertaking. This, however, affects the value only of his conclusions, not of his method; and here, as elsewhere, we see the great thinker tracing the outline of a plan, which, in the then state of knowledge, it was impossible to fill up, and the completion of which he was obliged to leave to the riper experience and more powerful resources of a later age. Thus to anticipate the march of the human intellect, and, as it were, forestall its subsequent acquisitions, is the peculiar prerogative of minds of the highest order; and it is this which gives to the writings of Montesquieu a certain fragmentary and provisional appearance, which was the necessary consequence of a profoundly speculative genius dealing with materials that were intractable, simply because science had not yet reduced them to order by generalizing the laws of their phenomena. Hence it is, that many of the inferences drawn by Montesquieu are untenable; such, for instance, as those regarding the effect of diet in stimulating population by increasing the fecundity of women,138 and the effect of climate in altering the proportion between the births of the sexes.139 In other cases, an increased acquaintance with barbarous nations has sufficed to correct his conclusions, particularly those concerning the effect which he supposed climate to produce on individual character; for we have now the most decisive evidence, that he was wrong in asserting140 that hot climates make people unchaste and cowardly, while cold climates make them virtuous and brave.

These, indeed, are comparatively trifling objections, because, in all the highest branches of knowledge, the main difficulty is, not to discover facts, but to discover the true method according to which the laws of the facts may be ascertained. In this,

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137 De l'Esprit des Lois, books xiv. to xviii. inclusive; in Euvres, pp. 300-336. 138 Ibid. livre xxiii. chap. xiii. p. 395. Compare Burdach, Traité de Physiologie, vol. ii. p. 116.

139 Ibid. livre xvi. chap. iv., and livre xxiii. chap. xii. pp. 317, 395.

140 Ibid. livre xiv. chap. ii., livre xvii. chap. ii., and elsewhere.

141 On the supreme importance of method, see my defence of Bichat in the next chapter.

Montesquieu performed a double service, since he not only enriched history, but also strengthened its foundation. He enriched history by incorporating with it physical inquiries; and he strengthened history by separating it from biography, and thus freeing it from details which are always unimportant, and often unauthentic. And although he committed the error of studying the influence of nature over men considered as individuals, 142 rather than over men considered as an aggregate society, this arose principally from the fact that, in his time, the resources necessary for the more complicated study had not yet been created. Those resources, as I have shown, are political economy and statistics: political economy supplying the means of connecting the laws of physical agents with the laws of the inequality of wealth, and, therefore, with a great variety of social disturbances; while statistics enable us to verify those laws in their widest extent, and to prove how completely the volition of individual men is controlled by their antecedents, and by the circumstances in which they are placed. It was, therefore, not only natural, but inevitable, that Montesquieu should fail in his magnificent attempt to unite the laws of the human mind with the laws of external nature. He failed, partly because the sciences of external nature were too backward, and partly because those other branches of knowledge which connect nature with man were still unformed. For, as to political economy, it had no existence as a science until the publication of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, twenty-one years after the death of Montesquieu. As to statistics, their philosophy is a still more recent creation, since it is only during the last thirty years that they had been systematically applied to social phenomena; the earlier statisticians being merely a body of industrious collectors, groping in the dark, bringing together facts of every kind without selection or method, and whose labours were consequently unavailable for those important purposes to which they have been successfully applied during the present generation.

Only two years after the publication of the Spirit of Laws, Turgot delivered those celebrated lectures, of which it has been said, that in them he created the philosophy of history.143 This

142 How completely futile this was, as regards results, is evident from the fact, that a hundred years after he wrote, we, with all our increased knowledge, can affirm nothing positively respecting the direct action of climate, food, and soil, in modifying individual character; though it has, I trust, appeared in the second chapter of this Introduction, that something can be ascertained respecting their indirect action, that is, their action on individual minds through the medium of social and economical organization.

143 "Il a créé en 1750 la philosophie de l'histoire dans ses deux discours prononcés en Sorbonne." Cousin, Hist. de la Philosophie, I. série, vol. i. p. 147. There is a short notice of these striking productions in Condorcet, Vie de Turgot, pp. 11-16.

praise is somewhat exaggerated; for in the most important matters relating to the philosophy of his subject, he takes the same view as Montesquieu; and Montesquieu, besides preceding him in point of time, was his superior certainly in learning, perhaps in genius. Still, the merit of Turgot is immense; and he belongs to that extremely small class of men, who have looked at history comprehensively, and have recognised the almost boundless knowledge needed for its investigation. In this respect, his method is identical with that of Montesquieu, since both of these great men excluded from their scheme the personal details which ordinary historians accumulate, and concentrated their attention upon those large general causes, by the operation of which the destinies of nations are permanently affected. Turgot clearly perceived, that, notwithstanding the variety of events produced by the play of human passions, there is amid this apparent confusion, a principle of order, and a regularity of march, not to be mistaken by those whose grasp is firm enough to seize the history of man as a complete and single whole. It is true that Turgot, subsequently engaged in political life, never possessed sufficient leisure to fill up the splendid outline of what he so successfully sketched: but though in the execution of his plan he fell short of Montesquieu, still the analogy between the two men is obvious, as also is their relation to the age in which they lived. They, as well as Voltaire, were the unconscious advocates of the democratic movement, inasmuch as they discountenanced the homage which historians had formerly paid to individuals, and rescued history from being a mere recital of the deeds of political and ecclesiastical rulers. At the same time, Turgot, by the captivating prospects which he held out of future progress, and by the picture which he drew of the capacity of society to improve itself, increased the impatience which his countrymen were beginning to feel against that despotic government, in whose presence amelioration seemed to be hopeless.

144 Nothing can be better than his summary of this vast conception: "Tous les ages sont enchaînés par une suite de causes et d'effets qui lient l'état du monde à tous ceux qui l'ont précédé." Second Discours en Sorbonne, in Euvres de Turgot, vol. ii. p. 52. Every thing Turgot wrote on history is a development of this pregnant sentence. That he understood the necessity of an historian being acquainted with physical science, and with the laws of the configuration of the earth, climate, soil, and the like, is evident in his fragment, La Géographie Politique, in Euvres, vol. ii. pp. 166-208. It is no slight proof of his political sagacity, that in 1750 he distinctly foretold the freedom of the American colonies. Compare Euvres de Turgot, vol. ii. p. 66, with Mém. sur Turgot, vol. i. p. 139.

145 A confidence which is apparent in his economical as well as in his historical works. In 1811, Sir James Mackintosh writes, that Turgot "had more comprehensive views of the progress of society than any man since Bacon:" Mem. of Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 133; and see a similar remark by Dugald Stewart, in his Philos. of the Mind, vol. i. p. 246.

These, and similar speculations, which now for the first time appeared in French literature, stimulated the activity of the intellectual classes, cheered them under the persecutions to which they were exposed, and emboldened them to the arduous enterprise of leading on the people to attack the institutions of their native land. Thus it was, that in France every thing tended to the same result. Every thing indicated the approach of some sharp and terrible struggle, in which the spirit of the present should war with the spirit of the past; and in which it should be finally settled, whether the people of France could free themselves from the chains in which they had long been held, or whether, missing their aim, they were doomed to sink still lower in that ignominious vassalage, which makes even the most splendid periods of their political history a warning and a lesson to the civilized world.