scheme, is a fact more clearly attested than any other in the moral history of man. We have here parallel chains of evidence formed with extreme care, under the most different circumstances, and all pointing in the same direction; all of them forcing us to the conclusion, that the offences of men are the result not so much of the vices of the individual offender as of the state of society into which that individual is thrown. 30 This is an inference resting on broad and tangible proofs accessible to all the world; and as such cannot be overturned, or even impeached, by any of those hypotheses with which metaphysicians and theologians have hitherto perplexed the study of past events.

Those readers who are acquainted with the manner in which in the physical world the operations of the laws of nature are constantly disturbed, will expect to find in the moral world disturbances equally active. Such aberrations proceed, in both instances, from minor laws, which at particular points meet the larger laws, and thus alter their normal action. Of this, the science of mechanics affords a good example in the instance of that beautiful theory called the parallelogram of forces; according to which the forces are to each other in the same proportion as is the diagonal of their respective parallelograms. This is a law pregnant with great results; it is connected with those important mechanical resources, the composition and resolution of forces; and no one acquainted with the evidence on which it stands, ever thought of questioning its truth. But the moment we avail ourselves of it for practical purposes, we find that in its action it is warped by other laws, such as those concerning the friction of air, and the different density of the bodies on which we operate, arising from their chemical composition, or, as some suppose, from their atomic arrangement. Perturbations being thus let in, the pure and simple action of the mechanical law disappears. Still, and although the results of the law are incessantly disturbed, the law itself remains intact. 32 Just in the same way, the great social law, that the moral actions of men are the product not of their volition, but of their antecedents, is

30 L'expérience démontre en effet, avec toute l'évidence possible, cette opinion, qui pourra sembler paradoxale au premier abord, que c'est la société qui prépare le crime, et que le coupable n'est que l'instrument qui l'exécute." Quetelet sur l'Homme, vol. ii. p. 325.

31 The diagonal always giving the resultant when each side represents a force; and if we look on the resultant as a compound force, a comparison of diagonals becomes a comparison of compounds.

32

A law of nature being merely a generalization of relations, and having no existence except in the mind, is essentially intangible; and therefore, however small the law may be, it can never admit of exceptions, though its operation may admit of innumerable exceptions. Hence, as Dugald Stewart (Philosophy of the Mind, vol. ii.

itself liable to disturbances which trouble its operation without affecting its truth. And this is quite sufficient to explain those slight variations which we find from year to year in the total amount of crime produced by the same country. Indeed, looking at the fact that the moral world is far more abundant in materials than the physical world, the only ground for astonishment is, that these variations should not be greater; and from the circumstance that the discrepancies are so trifling, we may form some idea of the prodigious energy of those vast social laws, which, though constantly interrupted, seem to triumph over every obstacle, and which, when examined by the aid of large numbers, scarcely undergo any sensible perturbation.33

Nor is it merely the crimes of men which are marked by this uniformity of sequence. Even the number of marriages annually contracted, is determined, not by the temper and wishes of individuals, but by large general facts, over which individuals can exercise no authority. It is now known that marriages bear a fixed and definite relation to the price of corn; and in England the experience of a century has proved that, instead of p. 211) rightly says, we can only refer to the laws of nature "by a sort of figure or metaphor." This is constantly lost sight of even by authors of repute; some of whom speak of laws as if they were causes, and therefore liable to interruption by larger causes; while other writers pronounce them to be "delegated agencies" from the Deity. Compare Prout's Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 318, 435, 495; Sadler's Law of Population, vol. ii. p. 67; Burdach's Physiologie, vol. i. p. 160. Mr. Paget, in his able work, Lectures on Pathology, vol. i. p. 481, vol. ii. p. 542, with much greater accuracy calls such cases "apparent exceptions" to laws; but it would be better to say, "exceptions to the operations of laws." The context clearly proves that Mr. Paget distinctly apprehends the difference; but a slight alteration of this kind would prevent confusion in the minds of ordinary readers.

* Mr. Rawson, in his Inquiry into the Statistics of Crime in England and Wales (published in the Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. ii. pp. 316-344), says, p. 327, "No greater proof can be given of the possibility of arriving at certain constants with regard to crime, than the fact which appears in the following table, that the greatest variation which has taken place during the last three years, in the proportion of any class of criminals at the same period of life, has not exceeded a half per cent." See also Report of British Association for 1839, Transac. of Sec., p. 118.Indeed all writers who have examined the evidence are forced to admit this regularity, however they may wish to explain it. M. Dufau (Traité de Statistique, p. 144) says, "Les faits de l'ordre moral sont, aussi bien que ceux de l'ordre naturel, le produit de causes constantes et régulières," &c.; and at p. 367, "C'est ainsi que le monde moral se présente à nous, de ce point de vue, comme offrant, de même que le monde physique, un ensemble continu d'effets dus à des causes constantes et régulières, don il appartient surtout à la statistique de constater l'action." See to the same effect Moreau-Christophe des Prisons en France, Paris, 1838, pp. 53, 189.

"It is curious to observe how intimate a relation exists between the price of food and the number of marriages." .... "The relation that subsists between the price of food and the number of marriages is not confined to our own country; and it is not improbable that, had we the means of ascertaining the facts, we should see the like result in every civilized community. We possess the necessary returns from France, and these fully bear out the view that has been given." Porter's Progress of the Nation, vol. ii. pp. 244, 245, London, 1838.

having any connexion with personal feelings, they are simply regulated by the average earnings of the great mass of the people: 35 so that this immense social and religious institution is not only swayed, but is completely controlled, by the price of food and by the rate of wages. In other cases, uniformity has been detected, though the causes of the uniformity are still unknown. Thus, to give a curious instance, we are now able to prove that the aberrations of memory are marked by this general character of necessary and invariable order. The post-offices of London and of Paris have latterly published returns of the number of letters which the writers, through forgetfulness, omitted to direct; and, making allowance for the difference of circumstances, the returns are year after year copies of each other. Year after year the same proportion of letter-writers forget this simple act; so that for each successive period we can actually foretell the number of persons whose memory will fail them in regard to this trifling and, as it might appear, accidental occurrence, 36

To those who have a steady conception of the regularity of events, and have firmly seized the great truth that the actions of men, being guided by their antecedents, are in reality never inconsistent, but, however capricious they may appear, only form part of one vast scheme of universal order, of which we in the present state of knowledge can barely see the outline,-to those who understand this, which is at once the key and the basis of history, the facts just adduced, so far from being strange, will be precisely what would have been expected, and ought long since to have been known. Indeed, the progress of inquiry is becoming so rapid and so earnest, that I entertain little doubt that before another century has elapsed, the chain of evidence will be complete, and it will be as rare to find an historian who denies the undeviating regularity of the moral world, as it now is to find a philosopher who denies the regularity of the material world.

It will be observed, that the preceding proofs of our actions being regulated by law, have been derived from statistics; a branch of knowledge which, though still in its infancy," has

35 "The marriage returns of 1850 and 1851 exhibit the excess which since 1750 has been invariably observed when the substantial earnings of the people are above the average." Journal of Statistical Society, vol. xv. p. 185.

30

See Somerville's Physical Geography, vol. ii. pp. 409-411, which, says this able writer, proves that "forgetfulness as well as free will is under constant laws." But this is using the word free will in a sense different from that commonly employed.

* Achenwall, in the middle of the eighteenth century, is usually considered to be the first systematic writer on statistics, and is said to have given them their present name. See Lewis, Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, 1852,

already thrown more light on the study of human nature than all the sciences put together. But although the statisticians have been the first to investigate this great subject by treating it according to those methods of reasoning which in other fields have been found successful; and although they have, by the application of numbers, brought to bear upon it a very powerful engine for eliciting truth,-we must not, on that account, suppose that there are no other resources remaining by which it may likewise be cultivated; nor should we infer that because the physical sciences have not yet been applied to history, they are therefore inapplicable to it. Indeed, when we consider the incessant contact between man and the external world, it is certain that there must be an intimate connexion between human actions and physical laws; so that if physical science has not hitherto been brought to bear upon history, the reason is, either that historians have not perceived the connexion, or else that, having perceived it, they have been destitute of the knowledge by which its workings can be traced. Hence there has arisen an unnatural separation of the two great departments of inquiry, the study of the internal, and that of the external: and although, in the present state of European literature, there are some unmistakable symptoms of a desire to break down this artificial barrier, still it must be admitted that as yet nothing has been actually accomplished towards effecting so great an end. The moralists, the theologians, and the metaphysicians, continue to prosecute their studies without much respect for what they deem the inferior labors of scientific men; whose inquiries, indeed, they frequently attack, as dangerous to the interests of religion, and as inspiring us with an undue confidence in the resources of the human understanding. On the other hand, the cultivators of physical science, conscious that they are an advancing body, are naturally proud of their own success; and, contrasting their discoveries with the more stationary position of their opponents, vol. i. p. 72; Biographie Universelle, vol. i. p. 140; Dufau, Traité de Statistique, pp. 9, 10. Even so late as 1800, the Bishop of Llandaff wrote to Sir John Sinclair, "I must think the kingdom is highly indebted to you for bringing forward a species of knowledge (statistics) wholly new in this country, though not new in other parts of Europe. Sinclair's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 230 Sinclair, notwithstanding his industry, was a man of slender powers, and did not at all understand the real importance of statistics, of which, indeed, he took a mere practical view. Since then sta tistics have been applied extensively to medicine; and still more recently, and on a smaller scale, to philology and to jurisprudence. Compare Bouillaud, Philosophie Medicale, pp. 96, 186; Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. pp. 474, 475; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. ii. pp. 665-667; Holland's Medical Notes, pp. 5, 472. Vogel's Pathological Anatomy, pp. 15-17; Simon's Pathology, p. 180: Phillips on Scrofula, pp. 70, 118, &c.; Prichard's Physical Hist. of Mankind, vol. iv. p. 414; Eschbach, Etude du Droit, pp. 392-394.

are led to despise pursuits the barrenness of which has now be come notorious.

It is the business of the historian to mediate between these two parties, and reconcile their hostile pretensions by showing the point at which their respective studies ought to coalesce. To settle the terms of this coalition, will be to fix the basis of all history. For since history deals with the actions of men, and since their actions are merely the product of a collision between internal and external phenomena, it becomes necessary to examine the relative importance of those phenomena; to inquire into the extent to which their laws are known; and to ascertain the resources for future discovery possessed by these two great classes, the students of the mind and the students of nature. This task I shall endeavor to accomplish in the next two chapters; and if I do so with any thing approaching to success, the present work will at least have the merit of contributing something towards filling up that wide and dreary chasm, which, to the hindrance of our knowledge, separates subjects that are intimately related, and should never be disunited.

NOTE A.

"Der Begriff der Freiheit ist ein reiner Vernunftbegriff, der eben darum fur die theoretische Philosophie transcendent, d. i. ein solcher ist, dem kein angemessenes Beispiel in irgend einer möglichen Erfahrung gegeben werden kann, welcher also keinen Gegenstand einer uns möglichen theoretischen Erkenntniss ausmacht, und schlechterdings nicht für ein constitutives, sondern lediglich als regulatives, und zwar nur blos negatives Princip der speculativen Vernunft gelten kann, im practischen Gebrauche der selben aber seine Realität durch praktische Grundsätze beweist, die, als Gesetze, eine Causalität der reinen Vernunft, unabhängig von allen empirischen Bedingungen (dem Sinnlichen überhaupt) die Willkühr zu bestimmen, und einen reinen Willen in uns beweisen, in welchem die sittlichen Begriffe und Gesetze ihren Ursprung haben." Metaphysik der Sitten, in Kant's Werke, vol. v. pp. 20, 21. "Würden die Gegenstände der Sinnenwelt für Dinge an sich selbst genommen, und die oben angeführten Naturgesetze für Gesetze der Dinge an sich selbst, so wäre der Widerspruch" (i. e. between Liberty and Necessity) "unvermeidlich. Ebenso, wenn das Subject der Freiheit gleich den übrigen Gegenständen als blose Erscheinung vorgestellt würde, so könnte ebensowohl der Widerspruch nicht vermieden werden; denn es würde ebendasselbe von einerlei Gegenstande in derselben Bedeutung zu gleich bejaht und verneint werden. Ist aber Naturnothwendigkeit blos auf Erschei nungen bezogen, und Freiheit blos auf Dinge an sich selbst, so entspringt kein Widerspruch, wenn man gleich beide Arten von Causalität annimmt oder zugibt, so schwer oder unmöglich es auch sein möchte, die von der letzteren Art begreiflich zu machen."... "Natur also und Freiheit ebendemselben Dinge, aber in verschie dener Beziehung, einmal als Erscheinung, das andremal als einem Dinge an sich selbst ohne Widerspruch beigelegt werden können." ... "Nun kann ich ohne Widerspruch sagen: alle Handlungen vernünftiger Wesen, sofern sie Erscheinungen