ignorance of physical laws, and so completely are we in the dark as to the circumstances which regulate the hereditary transmission of character, temperament," and other personal peculiarities, that we must consider this alleged progress as a very doubtful point; and, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot safely assume that there has been any permanent improvement in the moral or intellectual faculties of man, nor have we any decisive ground for saying that those faculties are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous country.12

parison of skulls led him to the conclusion, that the present inhabitants of Britain, "either as the result of many ages of greater intellectual cultivation, or from some other cause, have, as I am persuaded, much more capacious brain-cases than their forefathers." Prichard's Physical History of Mankind, vol. i. p. 305. Even if this were certain, it would not prove that the contents of the crania were altered, though it might create a presumption; and the general question must, I think, remain unsettled until the researches begun by Blumenbach, and recently continued by Morton, are carried out upon a scale far more comprehensive than has hitherto been attempted. Compare Burdach, Traité de Physiologie, vol. ii. p. 253; where, however, the question is not stated with sufficient caution.

"None of the laws of hereditary descent connected with the formation of character, have yet been generalized; nor is our knowledge much more advanced respecting the theory of temperaments, which still remains the principal obstacle in the way of the phrenologists. The difficulties attending the study of temperaments, and the obscurity in which this important subject is shrouded, may be estimated by whoever will compare what has been said upon it by the following writers: Müller's Physiology, vol. ii. pp. 1406-1410; Elliotson's Human Physiology, pp. 1059-1062; Blainville, Physiologie Générale et Comparée, vol i. pp. 168, 264, 265, vol. ii. pp. 43, 130, 214, 328, 329, vol. iii. pp. 54, 74, 118, 148, 149, 284, 285; Williams's Principles of Medicine, pp. 16, 17, 112, 113; Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. pp. 186, 190; Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. i. pp. 204, 205, vol. iii. p. 276; Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. i. p. 326; Sprengel, Hist. de la Medecine, vol. i. p. 380, vol. ii. p. 408, vol. iii. p. 21, vol. v. p. 325, vol. vi. 492; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. i. pp. 39, 226, 429, 594, vol. ii. p. 29; Lepelletier, Physiol. Médicale, vol. i. pp. 139, 281, vol. iii. pp. 372-429, vol. iv. pp. 93, 123, 133, 143, 148, 177; Henle, Anatomie Générale, vol. i. p. 474, vol. ii. pp. 288, 289, 316; Bichat, Anatomie Générale, vol. i. p. 207, vol. ii. p. 444, vol. iii. pp. 310, 507, vol. iv. pp. 281, 399, 400, 504; Bichat, sur la Vie, pp. 80, 81, 234, 235; Phillips on Scrofula, p. 9; Feuchtersleben's Medical Psychology, pp. 143-145; Euvres de Fontenelle, Paris, 1766, vol. v. p. 110; Cullen's Works, Edinb. 1827, vol. i. pp. 214-221; Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, pp. 76-83, 229-261, 520-533; Noble on the Brain, pp. 370-376; Combe's North America, vol. i. pp. 126128. Latterly, attention has been paid to the chemistry of the blood as it varies in the various temperaments: and this seems a more satisfactory method than the old plan of merely describing the obvious symptoms of the temperament. Clark on Animal Physiology, in Fourth Report of the British Association, p. 126; Simon's Animal Chemistry, vol. i. p. 236; Wagner's Physiology, p. 262.

"We often hear of hereditary talents, hereditary vices, and hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically examine the evidence will find that we have no proof of their existence. The way in which they are commonly proved is in the highest degree illogical; the usual course being for writers to collect instances of some mental peculiarity found in a parent and in his child, and then to infer that the peculiarity was bequeathed. By this mode of reasoning we might demonstrate any proposition; since in all large fields of inquiry there are a sufficient number of empirical coincidences to make a plausible case in favour of whatever view a man chooses to advocate. But this is not the way in which truth is discovered; and we ought to inquire not only how many instances there are of hereditary talents, &c.,

Whatever, therefore, the moral and intellectual progress of men may be, it resolves itself not into a progress of natural capacity, but into a progress, if I may so say, of opportunity; that is, an improvement in the circumstances under which that capacity after birth comes into play. Here, then, lies the gist of the whole matter. The progress is one, not of internal power, but of external advantage. The child born in a civilized land, is not likely, as such, to be superior to one born among barbarians; and the difference which ensues between the acts of the two children will be caused, so far as we know, solely by the pressure of external circumstances; by which I mean the surrounding opinions, knowledge, associations, in a word, the entire mental atmosphere in which the two children are respectively nurtured.

On this account it is evident, that if we look at mankind in the aggregate, their moral and intellectual conduct is regulated by the moral and intellectual notions prevalent in their own. time. There are, of course, many persons who will rise above those notions, and many others who will sink below them. But such cases are exceptional, and form a very small proportion of the total amount of those who are nowise remarkable either for good or for evil. An immense majority of men must always remain in a middle state, neither very foolish nor very able, neither very virtuous nor very vicious, but slumbering on in a peaceful and decent mediocrity, adopting without much difficulty the current opinions of the day, making no inquiry, exciting no scandal, causing no wonder, just holding themselves on a level with their generation, and noiselessly conforming to the

but how many instances there are of such qualities not being hereditary. Until something of this sort is attempted, we can know nothing about the matter inductively; while, until physiology and chemistry are much more advanced, we can know nothing about it deductively.

These considerations ought to prevent us from receiving statements (Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, pp. 644, 678, and many other books) which positively affirm the existence of hereditary madness and hereditary suicide; and the same remark applies to hereditary disease (on which see some admirable observations in Phillips on Scrofula, pp. 101-120, London, 1846); and with still greater force does it apply to hereditary vices and hereditary virtues; inasmuch as ethical phenomena have not been registered as carefully as physiological ones, and therefore our conclusions respecting them are even more precarious.

13 To what has been already stated, I will add the opinions of two of the most profound among modern thinkers. "Men, I think, have been much the same for natural endowments in all times." Conduct of the Understanding, in Locke's Works, vol. ii. p. 361. "Les dispositions primitives agissent également chez les peuples barbares et chez les peuples policés; ils sont vraisemblablement les mêmes dans tous les lieux et dans tous les tems. Plus il y aura d'hommes, et plus vous aurez de grands hommes ou d'hommes propres à devenir grands." Progrès de l'Esprit Humain, in Euvres de Turgot, vol. ii. p. 264. The remarks of Dr. Brown (Lectures on the Mind, p. 57), if I rightly understand his rhetorical language, apply not to natural capacity, but to that which is acquired: see the end of his ninth Lecture.

standard of morals and of knowledge common to the age and country in which they live.

Now, it requires but a superficial acquaintance with history to be aware that this standard is constantly changing, and that it is never precisely the same even in the most similar countries, or in two successive generations in the same country. The opinions which are popular in any nation, vary in many respects, almost from year to year; and what in one period is attacked as a paradox or a heresy, is in another period welcomed as a sober truth; which, however, in its turn is replaced by some subsequent novelty. This extreme mutability in the ordinary standard of human actions, shows that the conditions on which the standard depends must themselves be very mutable; and those conditions, whatever they may be, are evidently the originators of the moral and intellectual conduct of the great average of mankind.

Here, then, we have a basis on which we can safely proceed. We know that the main cause of human actions is extremely variable; we have only, therefore, to apply this test to any set of circumstances which are supposed to be the cause, and if we find that such circumstances are not very variable, we must infer that they are not the cause we are attempting to dis

cover.

Applying this test to moral motives, or to the dictates of what is called moral instinct, we shall at once see how extremely small is the influence those motives have exercised over the progress of civilization. For there is, unquestionably, nothing to be found in the world which has undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your own wishes; to love your neighbour as yourself; to forgive your enemies; to restrain your passions; to honour your parents; to respect those who are set over you: these, and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals; but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to then by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce.14

"That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament, contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the Apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar; and so far from supplying, as some suppose, an objection against Christianity, it is a strong recommendation of it, as indicating the intimate relation between the doctrines of Christ and the moral sympathies of mankind in different ages. But to assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues, on the part of the assertor, either gross ignorance or else wilful fraud. For evidence of the knowledge of moral truths possessed by barbarous nations, independently of Christianity, and for the most part previous to VOL. I.-9

But if we contrast this stationary aspect of moral truths with the progressive aspect of intellectual truths, the difference is indeed startling 15 All the great moral systems which have exercised much influence, have been fundamentally the same; all the great intellectual systems have been fundamentally different. In reference to our moral conduct, there is not a single principle now known to the most cultivated Europeans, which was not likewise known to the ancients. In reference to the conduct of our intellect, the moderns have not only made the most important additions to every department of knowledge that the ancients ever attempted to study, but besides this, they have upset and revolutionized the old methods of inquiry; they have consolidated into one great scheme all those resources of induction which Aristotle alone dimly perceived; and they have created sciences, the faintest idea of which never entered the mind of the boldest thinker antiquity produced.

These are, to every educated man, recognized and notorious facts; and the inference to be drawn from them is immediately obvious. Since civilization is the product of moral and intellectual agencies, and since that product is constantly changing, it evidently cannot be regulated by the stationary agent; because,

its promulgation, compare Mackay's Religious Development, vol. ii. pp. 376-380; Mure's Hist. of Greek Literature, vol. ii. p. 398, vol. iii. p. 380; Prescott's History of Mexico, vol. i. p. 31; Elphinstone's History of India, p. 47; Works of Sir W. Jones, vol. i. pp. 87, 168, vol. iii. pp. 105, 114; Mill's History of India, vol. i. p. 419; Bohlen, das alte Indien, vol. i. pp. 364-366; Beausobre, Histoire de Manichée, vol. i. pp. 318, 319; Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, p. 193; Transac. of Soc. of Bombay, vol. iii. p. 198; Transac. of Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 5, vol. iii. pp. 283, 284; Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 271, vol. vii. p. 40, vol. xvi. pp. 130, 277, vol. xx. pp. 460, 461; The Dabistan, vol. i. pp. 328, 338; Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. ii. p. 243; Syme's Embassy to Ava, vol. ii. p. 389; Davis's Chinese, vol. i. p. 196, vol. ii. pp. 136, 233; Journal Asiatique, I. série, vol. iv. p. 77, Paris, 1824.

15 Sir James Mackintosh was so struck by the stationary character of moral principles, that he denies the possibility of their advance, and boldly affirms that no further discoveries can be made in morals: "Morality admits no discoveries. . . . More than three thousand years have elapsed since the composition of the Pentateuch; and let any man, if he is able, tell me in what important respect the rule of life has varied since that distant period. Let the Institutes of Menu be explored with the same view; we shall arrive at the same conclusion. Let the books of false religion be opened; it will be found that their moral system is, in all its grand features, the same. . . . . The fact is evident, that no improvements have been made in practical morality. The facts which lead to the formation of moral rules are as accessible, and must be as obvious, to the simplest barbarian as to the most enlightened philosopher. The case of the physical and speculative sciences is directly opposite. There the facts are remote and scarcely accessible. From the countless variety of the facts with which they are conversant, it is impossible to prescribe any bounds to their future improvement. It is otherwise with morals. They have hitherto been stationary; and, in my opinion, they are likely for ever to continue so." Life of Mackintosh, edited by his Son, London, 1835, vol. i. pp. 119-122. Condorcet (Vie de Turgot, p. 180) says, "La morale de toutes les nations a été la même;' " and Kant (Logik, in Kant's Werke, vol. i. p. 356) "In der Moralphilosophie sind wir nicht weiter gekommen, als die Alten."

when surrounding circumstances are unchanged, a stationary agent can only produce a stationary effect. The only other agent is the intellectual one; and that this is the real mover may be proved in two distinct ways: first, because being, as we have already seen, either moral or intellectual, and being, as we have also seen, not moral, it must be intellectual; and secondly, because the intellectual principle has an activity and a capacity for adaptation, which, as I undertake to show, is quite sufficient to account for the extraordinary progress that, during several centuries, Europe has continued to make.

Such are the main arguments by which my view is supported; but there are also other and collateral circumstances which are well worthy of consideration. The first is, that the intellectual principle is not only far more progressive than the moral principle, but is also far more permanent in its results. The acquisitions made by the intellect are, in every civilized country, carefully preserved, registered in certain well-understood formulas, and protected by the use of technical and scientific language; they are easily handed down from one generation to another, and thus assuming an accessible, or, as it were, a tangible form, they often influence the most distant posterity, they become the heirlooms of mankind, the immortal bequest of the genius to which they owe their birth. But the good deeds effected by our moral faculties are less capable of transmission; they are of a more private and retiring character; while, as the motives to which they owe their origin are generally the result of self-discipline and of self-sacrifice, they have to be worked out by every man for himself; and thus, begun by each anew, they derive little benefit from the maxims of preceding experience, nor can they well be stored up for the use of future moralists. The consequence is, that although moral excellence is more amiable, and to most persons more attractive, than intellectual excellence, still, it must be confessed that, looking at ulterior results, it is far less active, less permanent, and, as I shall presently prove, less productive of real good. Indeed, if we examine the effects of the most active philanthropy, and of the largest and most disinterested kindness, we shall find that those effects are, comparatively speaking, short-lived; that there is only a small number of individuals they come in contact with and benefit; that they rarely survive the generation which witnessed their commencement; and that, when they take the more durable form of founding great public charities, such institutions invariably fall, first into abuse, then into decay, and after a time are either destroyed, or perverted from their original intention, mocking