Chapter V

Historical Method

I. John Austin

    I have spoken more than once of the paradox implied in the
Utilitarian combination of appeals to 'experience,' with
indifference to history. The importance of historical methods
already recognised by Mill has become more obvious in later
years. It was, as he saw, clearly desirable that the Utilitarians
should annex this field of Inquiry and apply appropriate methods.
I have said something of Mill's view of the problems thus
suggested; but the attitude of the Utilitarians in regard to them
may be more fully indicated by the writings of some of his
allies.
    John Austin (1790-1859)(1*) was accepted as the heir-apparent
to Bentham in the special department of jurisprudence. Five
years' service in the army was a unique apprenticeship for a
Benthamite; and, as his widow tells us, helped to develop his
chivalrous sense of honour. It may also help to explain a want of
sympathy for the democratic zeal of most of his comrades. In any
case, it did not suppress a delight in intellectual activity.
Austin left the army, and in 1818 was called to the bar, but
ill-health compelled him to retire in 1825. He was thus qualified
to be a jurist by some knowledge of practice, and forced to turn
his knowledge to theoretical application. Upon the foundation of
the London University he became the first professor of
jurisprudence. With the true scholar's instinct for thorough
preparation, he went to Bonn, studied the great German writers
upon jurisprudence, and made the acquaintance of eminent living
professors. The insular narrowness of Bentham and James Mill was
thus to be corrected by cosmopolitan culture. Austin returned
amidst the highest expectations. A clear voice, a perfect
delivery, and a courteous and dignified manner were suited to
give effect to his teaching; and unanimous tradition tells us
that his powers in conversation were unsurpassed. Why did he not
acquire such an intellectual leadership in London as Dugald
Stewart had enjoyed in Edinburgh? Some reasons are obvious.
English barristers and law students were serenely indifferent to
the 'philosophy of law.' They had quite enough to do in acquiring
familiarity with the technicalities of English practice. The
University itself turned out to be chiefly a high school for boys
not yet ripe for legal studies. Though J. S. Mill attended his
lectures and took elaborate notes, few men had Mill's thirst for
knowledge. Moreover, Austin thought it a duty to be as dry as
Bentham, and discharged that duty scrupulously. The audiences
dwindled, and the salary, derived from the fees, dwindled with
it. Austin, a poor man, could not go on discoursing gratuitously
to empty benches, and gave his last lecture in 1832.
    Admiring friends did their best to find a sphere for his
talents. Brougham placed him on the Criminal Law Commission,
where he soon found that there was no serious chance of being
employed, as he desired, in active codification A course of
lectures promoted by the sound Utilitarian, Henry Bickersteth
(Lord Langdale), at the Inner Temple fell as flat as the former.
Austin retired to France, saying that he was born out of time and
place, and should have been a 'schoolman of the twelfth century
or a German professor.' He was afterwards on a Commission at
Malta, with his friend Sir G. Cornewall Lewis for a colleague. A
change of government brought this employment to an end. Austin
gave up active work. He passed some years in Germany and France
in the enjoyment of intellectual society. After the revolution of
1848 he returned to England, and led a quiet country life at
Weybridge. His sole later publication was a pamphlet against
parliamentary reform in 1859. He died in the following December.
Weak health and a fastidious temperament partly account for his
silence. After publishing his early lectures he could never be
induced to bring out a second edition. He suffered from scholar's
paralysis -- preference of doing nothing to doing anything short
of the ideal standard. He had not strength to satisfy the demands
of German professors, and cared nothing for the applause of the
British public. His 'estimate of men was low,' says Mrs Austin,
'and his solicitude for their approbation was consequently
small.' His want of success did not embitter, though it
discouraged him; and he was constantly, we are told, 'meditating
on the sublimest themes that can occupy the mind of man.' He kept
the results for his own circle of hearers. Utilitarian zeal for
democracy was impossible for him. He had the scholar's contempt
for the vulgar, and dreaded political changes which could
increase the power of the masses. It is the more remarkable that
Austin's Utilitarianism is of the most rigid orthodoxy. A
thorough Benthamite training gave absolute immunity to even the
germs of transcendental philosophy. He speaks with the
profoundest respect of the great German professors, especially of
Savigny. He cordially admires their learning and acuteness. But
when they deviate into philosophy he denounces their 'jargon' as
roundly as Bentham or James Mill. Austin became the typical
expounder of Benthamite jurisprudence. His lectures long enjoyed
a high reputation: partly, I cannot help guessing, because, good
or bad, they had the field to themselves; partly, also, because
their dry, logical articulation fits them admirably for
examination purposes; and partly, I do not doubt, because they
represent some rare qualities of mind. Their fame declined upon
the rise of the 'historical school.' Austin's star set as Maine's
rose. Yet Austin himself claimed that his was the really
historical method. The historical school, he says,(2*) is the
school which appeals to 'experience,' and holds that a 'body of
law cannot be spun out of a few general principles, considered a
priori.' Bentham clearly falls under the definition, for Bentham
considered the reports of English decisions to be 'an invaluable
mine of experience for the legislator.' If this be an adequate
criterion, how does Bentham differ from the school which claimed
the historical method as its distinctive characteristic? Austin
aims at giving a 'philosophy of law.' The phrase at once
indicates two correlative lines of inquiry. A 'law' supposes a
law-giver -- an authority which lays down or enforces the law. We
may then inquire what is implied by the existence of this
authority, or what is its origin, growth, and constitution? That
is a problem of 'social dynamics.' We may, again, take the
existence of the state for granted; inquire what are the actual
laws; how they can be classified and simplified; and what are the
consequent relations between the state and the individual. That
is a problem of 'social statics,' and corresponds to the ordinary
legal point of view. The conception of 'law' is common to both,
though it may be approached from opposite directions, and may
require modification so as to bring the results of the two lines
of inquiry into harmony. The problems, and therefore the methods
of inquiry, must be distinct, but each may be elucidated by the
other.
    Austin's position is given by his definition of law. It
implies what has been called the 'Austinian analysis,' and is
considered by his followers to dissolve all manner of
sophistries. It is already implied in Hobbes.(3*) A law, briefly,
is the command of a sovereign enforced by a sanction. The
definition gives the obvious meaning for the lawyer. Murder is
punishable by death. That is the law of England. To prove that is
the law, we need only go to the statute-book. The statute rests
upon the absolute authority of the legislature. It assumes the
existence, then, of a sovereign; an ultimate authority behind
which the lawyer never goes. It is for him infallible. The
English lawyer accepts an act of parliament as a man of science
accepts a law of nature. If there be any law which has not these
marks it is for him no law. Conduct is illegal when the state
machinery can be put in force to suppress it. Therefore the
sphere of law is precisely marked out by the conception of the
sovereign and the sanction.
    The definition, then, may be true and relevant for all the
lawyer's purposes. But a definition, as J. S. Mill would point
out, is not a sufficient foundation for a philosophy. It may
provisionally mark out some province for investigation; but we
must always be prepared to ask how far the definition corresponds
to an important difference. Now Austin's definition has important
implications. It excludes as well as includes. Having defined a
law, he argues that many other things which pass by that name are
only 'metaphorically' or 'analogically' laws; and this raises the
question, whether the fact that they do not conform to his
definition corresponds to a vital difference in their real
nature? Is he simply saying, 'I do not call them laws,' or really
pointing out an essential and relevant difference of 'kind'? An
important point is suggested by one exclusion. We are not to
confound the so-called laws proper with the 'laws of nature' of
scientific phraseology. Such a law of nature is simply a
statement of a general fact. The astronomer asserts that the
motion of bodies may be described by a certain formula. In saying
so, he does not assert, even if he believes the inference to be
legitimate, that their motion is caused by a divine command or
enforced by a sanction. The actual uniformity is all that
concerns him. The uniformity produced by law proper led, as
Austin holds, to a confusion between different conceptions.
Austin was clearly right in pointing out the difference; and
scientific thinkers, before and since his time, have had to
struggle with a fallacy, singularly tenacious of life. A 'law of
nature' in the scientific sense is not a law in the jurist's
sense. The difference may be regarded in another way The two
senses of law differ as a 'command' differs from a proposition;
the imperative from the indicative mood. The command, 'Do not
murder,' is not a simple proposition. It belongs rather to action
than to belief. It utters a volition and therefore creates a
fact, instead of simply expressing a truth. Yet a command is also
a fact, and may be regarded as part of the general system of
fact. The command, 'Do not murder,' implies the fact, 'murder is
forbidden.' We might show that in certain social conditions
murder becomes punishable by death. That is a property of society
at certain stages. If the social machinery worked with perfect
accuracy, it would be as much a law of nature that a society
kills murderers as that a wolf kills lambs or that fire burns
straw. From this point of view, then, a 'law proper' falls under
the conception of a 'law of nature,' though a law of nature is
not a 'law proper.' It is a law of nature in the making, or a law
of nature which is only fulfilled when a number of complex
conditions of human conduct are satisfied. Austin, denying that
free-will means a really arbitrary element, would no doubt have
admitted that the 'law proper' was a product of the general laws
(in the scientific sense) of human nature. This aspect of the
case, however, passes out of sight. The law is something created;
'set,' as he calls it, or laid down by the sovereign at his own
will, and is thus perfectly arbitrary. That is the ultimate fact,
and makes a radical difference. We stop at the 'command,' and do
not ask how the command itself comes into existence. This
corresponds to J. S. Mill's distinction between 'making' and
'growing.' Law belongs to the region of 'making.' It originates
in the will of the sovereign. Whatever he wills and 'sanctions,'
and nothing else, is therefore law in the proper sense of the
term.
    Another class of 'laws' is excluded by the definition. A
'custom' is not a law proper. I obey many rules, which are not
'commands' and not enforced by legal sanctions. I conform to
countless rules of conduct, though no assignable person has ever
made them, and though the sovereign will not punish me for
breaking them. In such rules the disapproval of society may act
in the same way as a sanction, though not annexed by a sovereign.
The resemblance may pass into identity. Customs become laws, as
they receive the sanction of the legislator or of the courts.
This includes Bentham's 'judge-made' law; and Austin diverges
from Bentham by recognising this as a legitimate mode of
legislation. The question then arises whether the distinction
between laws and customs is essential or superficial -- a real
distinction of kinds or only important in our classification.
From the lawyer's point of view, again, the importance is
obvious. He always wishes to know precisely at what point the law
can be brought to bear. whether a rule will be enforced by the
courts, or generally Under what circumstances a custom will be
accepted as a law. The answer necessarily leads to much legal
subtlety. The custom may be treated as constructively a law. The
sovereign has not actually made nor 'sanctioned' it; but virtue
has somehow gone out of him by implication, and his recognition
is equivalent to imposition of the rule. Though the 'sovereign'
has not really 'made' the law, he may be considered as having
made it by a metaphysical fiction. In this direction Austin
becomes the twelfth century schoolman, and has to split hairs to
force his definition upon the facts. The inquiry, though
necessary from the lawyer's point of view, becomes irrelevant
from the sociologist's. The social action is the same, whether
the rule obeyed be a custom or a law strictly so called.
Confusion therefore follows when the question of legal validity
is substituted for the question of real efficacy. Primitive
societies obey implicitly a variety of elaborate 'laws' or
'customs,' though they have no conception of legislation. The
obedience to the rule is instinctive, and the rule regarded as
absolutely unalterable. Are such rules 'laws' -- though not made
by a sovereign -- or mere 'customs,' though obeyed as strictly as
the most effective 'laws'? Austin answers consistently that they
are not laws at all. There are people, he says, in 'a state of
nature,'(4*) such as the savages in New Holland or North America.
Their life, in Hobbes's famous phrase, is 'solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.' Their laws correspond to mere 'positive
morality or the law set by public opinion,' which is necessarily
so uncertain that it cannot serve as a complete guide of conduct,
nor can it be sufficiently minute or detailed.(5*) Savages, it
seems, form herds not societies, and may be simply left out of
consideration by the philosophical jurist. Austin, of course.
could not be expected to anticipate more recent investigations
into archaic institutions; but he was unlucky in thus summarily
condemning them by anticipation. In any case the position
indicates an important gap in his system. What was the legal bond
which converted the herds into political societies? The problem
of the formation of society had been solved not by historical
inquiry but by the 'social contract theory.' Austin follows
Bentham and Hume. They had shown conclusively not only that the
contract was a figment historically, but that it could not supply
what was wanted. It professed to add the sanctity of a promise to
the social bond, whereas the sanctity of a promise itself
requires explanation. The theory simply amounted, as Bentham had
urged, to a roundabout way of introducing utility. Any sort of
contract, as Austin urges,(6*) presupposes a formed political
society. Clearly it cannot otherwise be a contract in his sense
-- an obligation enforced by a sanction -- when it is itself to
be the foundation of sovereignty or sanctions. Austin therefore
rejects contemptuously the doctrine of natural law accepted by
his German teachers. The theory that there is somehow or other a
body of law, deducible by the pure reason, and yet capable of
overriding or determining the 'law proper,' is his great example
of ontological 'jargon' and 'fustian.' Austin's disciples
hold(7*) that his main service to the philosophy of law was
precisely his exposure of the fallacy. The 'Natur-Recht' is
'jargon.' It is most desirable to discuss ideal law as meaning
the law which it would be useful to adopt; but to speak as if it
had already some transcendental reality is to confuse 'ought'
with 'is' or, as Austin would say, the question of utility with
the question of actual existence. The 'natural law' corresponds
to the legal fictions denounced by Bentham, under which, when
really making law, judges pretended to be only applying an
existing law; and to the theories attacked in the Anarchical
Fallacies, according to which this ideal law could override the
actual law. Austin's polemic was no doubt directed against a
theory fertile in confusion and fallacies.
    Still the social contract, though exploded, leaves a problem
for solution. Somehow or other the social organism has been put
together, or, in Austin's phrase, the sovereign has come into
existence. To explain this is the sociological problem. Austin
recognises a difficulty. Generally speaking, he says, 'the
constitution of the supreme society has grown.'(8*) It should
then, we might expect, be studied like other growths, as the
physiologist studies the growth of plants and animals and tries
to formulate the processes. Austin, however, protests by
anticipation. He does not use the 'fustian but current phrase,'
Growth, to cover anything mysterious. He only means that
governments have in fact been put together by unsystematic
processes' -- 'by a long series of 'authors' and 'successive
sovereigns.' They did not, that is, spring ready-made from the
hand of a supernatural legislator, but they were made by a series
of patchings and cobblings carried out by ignorant and
short-sighted rulers. The 'growing,' then, was really 'making,'
however blundering and imperfect. Thus we have no 'mystical'
social bond. Society has been constructed all along by the same
method. The ultimate cause has always been, the perception of the
utility of political government, or the preference by the bulk of
the community of any government to anarchy.'(9*) The theory thus
appears to be that men in fact made such an agreement as the
social contract supposes, though the agreement had not the force
of a contract. Men have always seen, as they see now, that
government is useful; and thus 'perception of utility' (not
utility simply) is the sole force which holds society together
and supports the sovereign and the sanctions.
    A practical lawyer has little concern with savages and the
origin of civil society. Austin's principles, however, apply to
the modern society also. Law, as he seems to think, excludes or
supersedes custom, so that the whole fabric of the state is
entirely dependent upon the 'sovereign,' and the social union
upon the 'perception of utility.' As a rule, one might observe,
the question hardly arises. Men accept the social constitution
into which they are born, because they can't help it. They never
ask whether it is useful because they have no alternative of
joining or separating. I may ask whether I shall belong to this
or that club; but no one can choose whether he shall or shall not
be a member of society. This leads to the point already noticed
under Bentham. Custom is not really the creature of law, but law
the product of custom. The growth of a society does not imply the
disappearance of instinct, but implies on the contrary that
certain fundamental instincts and the corresponding modes of
action have become so thoroughly settled and organised that the
society is capable of combining to modify particular regulations.
When the English people passed the Reform Bill and the Americans
accepted the constitution of the United States they altered very
important laws, but it was precisely because they had been so
thoroughly imbued with certain habits of combined action,
involving the acceptance of complex legislative processes, that
they were able to make changes in the less essential parts of the
constitution. The 'sanction' no doubt determines the conduct of
the individual. But when we ask upon what then does the sovereign
power depend, we must go behind the law, and ask what are the
complex instincts, beliefs, and passions which in fact bind men
together and constitute the society as a moral organism.
    The weak side of the 'Austinian analysis' is this
transference of a legal conception to a sociological problem.
Distinctions valid and important in their own sphere become
irrelevant and lead to idle subtleties beyond that sphere. What,
in fact, is the sovereign? He stands for an undeniable fact. Law
presupposes a state and political unity. Political order implies
some supreme and definite authority which can be invoked in all
controversies as to what is or is not the law. The simplest case
would be an irresponsible despot who could command whatever he
pleased, and whose commands would be implicitly obeyed. If he
does not exist he must be invented, as Voltaire said of the
Deity. He is a 'fictitious entity,' or the incarnation of legal
authority. This corresponds to the truth implied in the
Utilitarian polemic against the supposed balance of powers and
the mixture of the three abstract forms, monarchy, aristocracy,
and democracy. The existence of the state implies unity of
authority and the agreement that the validity of laws shall
depend upon their elaboration by definite constitutional
processes. But then we have to ask, Who precisely is the
sovereign? The answer would be simple in the case of the
individual despot. When the sovereign is not a single man but an
organised body of men, such phrases as 'will' and 'command'
become metaphorical. The will is not one will, but the product of
multitudinous wills acting in complex though definable ways. The
sovereign is not an entity distinct from the subjects, but is
composed of the subjects themselves, or some fraction of them,
according to a definite set of regulations. Can the state be
treated as the embodiment of an external force? Austin is greatly
puzzled to say who, in a given case, is the sovereign? Is
parliament, or the House of Commons, or the electoral body the
ultimate sovereign of England? Who is the true sovereign in a
federal government such as the United States, where sovereign
powers are distributed in complex ways? The legal question, What
are the recognised forms by which valid laws are nominally
constructed? is again confounded with the question of fact, What
are the real forces which, in fact, produce obedience? The
British Constitution has been steadily altering from remote times
as a certain understanding has been developed. The centre of
power has imperceptibly shifted without definite legislation; and
the legal theory has remained unaltered, or has only conformed to
customs already established. The question, therefore, what forms
must be observed in conformity to precedent or explicit
legislation, is entirely different from the question, What are
the really dominant forces? The crown can undoubtedly veto an act
of parliament in the legal sense of 'can'; whether it 'can' do so
in the practical sense is a question only to be solved by saying
what are the real forces which lie beneath the constitutional
machinery.
    I have already noticed the tendency of the Utilitarians to
confuse the legal doctrine of the sovereign's omnipotence with
the doctrine of his omnipotence in fact. Macaulay had
sufficiently pointed out to Mill that the sovereign was limited:
limited by his own character and by the impossibility of
enforcing laws not congenial to the public sentiment. Austin
illustrates a further result. Customs are legally invalid till
recognised and sanctioned by the sovereign. That is important for
the lawyer. But interpreted as a law of 'social dynamics,' it
leads to the inversion by which custom is supposed to be created
by the law, and the sovereign made the ultimate source of power,
instead of being himself the product of a long and intricate
process of development of custom. Here, therefore, is the point
at which the Utilitarian view becomes antithetic to the
historical. It seeks to explain the first state of society by the
last, instead of explaining the last by the first. We can see,
too, the main reason for this mode of conceiving the case. To
Austin the reference to the underlying forces by which political
society is built up seemed to be 'mysticism.' A fully developed
'law' is intelligible: the customs which grow up in the twilight
before the full light of day has appeared are too incoherent and
shadowy for scientific treatment. The mode of analysing all
phenomena into independent and uniform atoms leads to this
result. Causation itself had been reduced to mere sequence to get
rid of a 'mystic bond,' and the same method is applied to social
phenomena.(10*) We have the difficulty which occurs so often in
the Utilitarian theories. They desire on the one hand to be
scientific, and on the other hand to be thoroughly empirical. The
result is to divide the two spheres: to enlarge as much as
possible the variability of human society in order to be
'empirical'; and to regard the constituent atoms as unchangeable.
Hence they have always a difficulty of conceiving of growth or
'evolution,' in which variation is supposed to be compatible with
the existence of law, or to combine the two aspects of change and
uniformity. That always appears to them to be 'mystical.' Though
they deny 'freewill,' they give the widest possible range to the
sphere of voluntary action. 'Making' is radically distinguished
from 'growing,' instead of being simply growth directed by
conscious foresight. There is nothing really more 'mystical,'
though there is something much more complex, in the growth of a
society than in the growth of a natural species. But as it
supposes a change due to something in the constitution of the man
himself, not to merely 'external circumstances,' it has to be
rejected as much as possible. Hence we get our omnipotent
sovereign creating laws and customs and to be taken as an
ultimate fact.
    I need not point out at length the relation of these views to
Utilitarianism in general, and to the belief in the indefinite
modifiability of human nature and the transcendent importance of
political machinery. It is enough to note that Austin's position
involves one assumption remarkable in a Utilitarian. The
empiricism of the Utilitarians is interpreted to mean that
everything must be explained by circumstances, and conduct
therefore by 'external' sanctions. Austin feels that, after all,
some bond must be required to hold men together. The legislative
sanctions cannot be quite ultimate. In fact, we want 'morality';
and he therefore includes the 'laws of God' among the laws which
are really, not metaphorically, laws. He thus accepts the Paley
view, though with a certain reserve., Utility, is the sole
criterion or 'index,' as he calls it, to the moral law. Still,
the law requires a sanction. The sanction is left in judicious
vagueness; but we are told that God must be benevolent, and must
therefore be held to approve the conduct which promotes the
happiness of his creatures. This, it would seem, is essential to
Austin's position.(11*) Whether he was practising some 'economy,'
and what his fellow Utilitarians would have thought of it, and
how precisely he would have justified his position logically, are
questions which I cannot discuss.
    The application of Austin's principles to the purely legal
sphere lies beyond my purpose. His aim is to analyse the primary
conceptions of jurisprudence in accordance with his principles,
and to obtain a rational classification of law in general.
Whether the result was satisfactory, or how far satisfactory, I
cannot inquire. The lectures were reviewed in the Edinburgh both
by J. F. Stephen(12*) and by J. S. Mill.(13*) Both of them speak
warmly of the merits of Sir Henry Maine, then beginning to be
famous, and both regard the two methods as correlative rather
than antagonistic. That they ought to be correlative is clear. A
sound theory of origins and growth should be perfectly compatible
with a sound theory of the actual order. But whether the two
systems actually present that harmony is another question.
    The political application of Austin's principles might be
illustrated from the writings of his friend and disciple, Sir
George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863).(14*) Strong sense, unflagging
industry, and the highest integrity won for Lewis high authority
in parliament. A boundless thirst for knowledge, supported by a
remarkable, memory, enabled him to discuss many topics of
historical criticism. He was intimate with Grote, who accepted
his suggestions upon Greek history respectfully. and his
intellect was of the true Utilitarian type. His writings are as
dry as the most thoroughgoing Utilitarian could desire. He will
not give his readers credit for understanding the simplest
argument till it is set down at full length in plain black and
white. He was sceptical, and practical experience had impressed
him, even to excess, with the worthlessness of human testimony.
In politics scepticism naturally becomes empiricism; and as a
thoroughgoing empiricist he rejects altogether James Mill's
absolute methods. He is as convinced as Macaulay that political
theories must be based upon observation, and is entirely free
from the error of supposing that a constitution can be devised
without reference to time, place, and circumstance. Yet he could
write a dialogue upon the best form of government, which seems to
imply that some real meaning can be given to the problem without
reference to the stage of social development, that is, to the one
condition which makes the problem intelligible.
    One reason is that Lewis was a practical man, and he shows
very clearly why the practical man was inclined to
Utilitarianism. A chancellor of the exchequer knows that the fate
of a budget depends upon him, and refuses to regard himself as a
mere tool of fate. A scientific treatment of history would lead,
he thinks, to fatalism.(15*) Everything is intrinsically
uncertain where the human will is concerned.(16*) Such events as
the French revolution, therefore, must be regarded as
controllable by statesmanship, and not, with some historians,
declared to have been 'inevitable.' When we have got to the
statesman or to the sovereign we have the ultimate cause, and
need not ask whether he be not himself a product. Thus all laws,
constitutional or otherwise, may be compared to machinery,(17*)
and suppose contrivance or design. All institutions have been
made, and he assumes that even polygamy and slavery were
'dictated by unsound practical arguments.'(18*) The tendency of
such a doctrine is clear. All institutions, from the most organic
to the most superficial, are regarded as equally a product of
conscious manufacture. Their relation to the processes of social
growth is tacitly disregarded, and the whole organism can be
modified by a simple shuffling of the cards. We can therefore
attack the problem of the best form of government without
emphasising the necessary reference to historical conditions.
Lewis's wide reading supplied him with any number of judicious
remarks, drawn from all authorities between Aristotle and Comte.
Undoubtedly such remarks deserve respect; they are apt to be
commonplace, but are not therefore useless. Only, to apply them
to any purpose, it is necessary to have a more definite
understanding of the processes of social development which limit
and define their value at any given stage. Empiricism, thus
understood, really makes scientific method, as well as any
definite scientific conclusion, impossible. Even in the purely
practical sphere, the most important of all problems for a
statesman is to know what are the limits of his powers, and to
recognise what is really 'inevitable' in the great changes.
Otherwise, he is in the position of Mrs Partington fighting the
Atlantic. Lewis became a Whig instead of a Utilitarian Radical;
but it may be doubtful whether Whig 'opportunism' was not the
most natural development of the Utilitarian empiricism.

 II. GEORGE GROTE

    The great representative of Utilitarian history is George
Grote (1794-1871).(19*) In some respects he was the most typical
Utilitarian. Grote had been introduced to James Mill by Ricardo
in 1817. He had yielded after some struggle to Mill's personal
influence; and, though a student of Kant, had become an
unhesitating proselyte. He had edited Philip Beauchamp, had
defended radical reform against Mackintosh in 1821, and had
joined J. S. Mill and other young friends in their systematic
logical discussions. He fully sympathised with J. S. Mill's
philosophy, and, as Professor Bain tells us,(20*) hardly any man
'conned and thumbed' the Logic as he did. He was more of a
Millite than Mill. Their friendship survived in spite of Mill's
seclusion, and of certain doubts in Grote's mind of his friend's
orthodoxy. The articles upon Coleridge and Bentham, marking
Mill's sentimental backslidings, alarmed the more rigid adherent
of the faith. During the political career of the 'philosophical
Radicals' Grote was the faithful Abdiel. He defended their pet
nostrum, the ballot, until the party became a vanishing quantity.
'You and I,' said Charles Buller to him in 1836, 'will be left to
"tell" Molesworth.'(21*) On the fall of the Melbourne ministry he
gave up parliament, and in 1843 retired from the bank in which he
had been a partner. His continued interest in the old Utilitarian
principles was shown by his lifelong activity in the management
of University College and the University of London. Happily, he
could occupy himself in a more productive enterprise. He had been
long interested in Greek history, and his great work appeared at
intervals from 1846 to 1856. His study of Plato appeared in 1865,
and he was still labouring upon Aristotle at the time of his
death.
    Of the substantial merits of Grote's History I shall not
presume to speak. It took its place at once, and gives a
conclusive proof that the Utilitarian position was no
disqualification for writing history. It seems, indeed, to prove
a good deal more; namely, that the Utilitarian who was faithful
to his most vital principles was especially qualified to be a
historian.
    The true position may perhaps be suggested by a remark in a
recent book(22*) by MM. Langlois and Seignobos. In laying down
the conception of history as now accepted by the best writers,
they remark that Grote 'produced the first model of a history' in
the class to which it belongs. The principle illustrated is
significant. 'The aim of history,' we are told, 'should now be
not to please, nor to give practical maxims of conduct, nor to
arouse the emotions, but [to give] knowledge pure and simple.'
History should be a descriptive science. Historians must be
content to give political facts as a writer upon a natural
science gives the ascertained facts about physiology or
chemistry. Nothing, it may be said, could be more in accordance
with Utilitarian doctrine. It was their very first principle to
rely upon fact pure and simple, and to make it precede
speculation and to minimise 'sentiment,' 'vague generalities,'
and a priori theories. If Grote wrote a model history, it was
because he thoroughly embodied the Utilitarian spirit. He studied
the evidence with immense knowledge, unflagging industry, and
thorough impartiality. He resembled an ideal judge investigating
evidence in a trial. That was the method which, upon their own
showing, the Utilitarians were bound to apply to all subjects,
and Grote applied it to Greece with triumphant success.
    The Utilitarian principle, again, was opposed to the errors
most seductive to earlier historians. The classical histories
were meant to be works of art. The artistic aim is incompatible
with scientific history, so far as it interferes with the primary
aim of giving the unadulterated facts. To give a clear, coherent,
and distinct narrative of a complex series of events requires,
indeed, powers of literary expression even of the highest order.
The artistic purpose must be strictly subordinate rather than
absent. A writer must not disguise or embellish or omit with a
view to artistic effect of the whole; and must often sacrifice
the impressive to the truthful. Sometimes, indeed, the historian
must be dull -- but that is a condition against which neither
Grote nor the Utilitarians generally protested. It had been the
aim of a different school to avoid dulness and to rival the
Waverley Novels in making past history live. The errors of such
men as Thierry and Michelet, or Carlyle, Macaulay and Froude,
show the dangers of the method. The severe historian may perhaps
forgive them in consideration of the interest which they excited
in their studies. May he not also admit that the aim is, in some
sort, legitimate? The people, after all, were once alive, and
that truth has some bearing upon their history. If imagination
means a faculty of generating illusions, as the Utilitarians
generally thought, it is no doubt mischievous. But even for the
bare purpose of judging evidence and perceiving truth the
imagination is essential. The error of transposing modern
standards of thought into previous epochs is too obvious to
require illustration; but it is really the fault less of an
excess than of a defect of imagination. The writer must be able,
at every turn, to put himself in the place of his heroes, and of
their contemporaries, if he would understand the meaning of their
actions, or even judge the weight to be attributed to the
evidence. That requires a trained and duly subordinate faculty of
imagination. Even for mere annals -- simple statements of hard
facts -- imagination is required, and it is required the more as
we endeavour to rise from annals to history, or to make history
more than an 'old calendar.'
    A sound Utilitarian might be expected to make the proper
compromise. No one could be more on his guard against the error
of subordinating truth to poetic fancy. But he would not deny the
importance of so much imaginative sympathy as is implied in a
clear apprehension of the mental and moral condition of past
epochs. He might find a sufficient substitute for the dangerous
faculty of picturesque imagination in the more sober faculty
which Grote possessed -- massive common sense; the 'knowledge of
human nature,' as it is called, which corresponds not to poetic
imagination or to a set of established formulae, but to the
practical insight acquired by intimate acquaintance with actual
affairs. If Grote was able to rival or to surpass German
professors on their own ground, it was because his want of some
of their special training was more than counterbalanced by his
experience of business and public life. In Threadneedle Street
and at Westminster he had acquired an instinctive perception
which served him in describing the political and economical
conditions of Athenian life. When joined with an ardour for
research that power gave a value to his judgments of fact which
enabled him to write a model history.
    The 'graphic' or 'artistic' type of history may be
objectionable; is not the philosophical worse? Nothing distorts
facts so much as theory; and a scientific historian should be on
his guard against the philosopher of all men. But how to draw the
line? Stick to bare fact and you can only write annals. History
proper begins as you introduce causation, and the mere series is
transformed into a process. It is impossible to get a bare fact
without some admixture of theory. The Utilitarian principle,
again, suggests the right aim. It excludes the mischievous
didacticism of older historians. The question of fact must
everywhere precede the question of right. In politics, economics
and ethics Bentham and Malthus and the Mills had in various
relations applied the principle which applies equally to history,
The historian may adopt Spinoza's great saying. His business is
to understand, not to approve or denounce. A historian treats of
some great event such as the French revolution. His one
legitimate and dominant purpose should be to explain its causes,
and he should inquire with absolute impartiality how it came to
pass, not whether it was right or wrong. The old method of
writing history attributed events to individuals, and
consistently applied a moral estimate. If the action of this or
that man, Mirabeau or Robespierre, was the ultimate cause of the
events, we may ask whether the action was good or bad, and infer
that the event ought or ought not to have happened. The
scientific view fixes attention simply On the causes. What were
the conditions which determined the event? We must inquire as
impartially as a pathologist examining the causes of a disease.
The category of causation is the sole category relevant. Ethical
judgments may follow: we may decide that certain processes
implied progress or decay; we may go on to judge of the
individuals, making allowance for their motives after estimating
what view of the facts was possible for them, and we shall
generally find that there were good men and bad men on both
sides, and that it is out of place to apply such words as right
or wrong to the events themselves. The moral question is
transferred to another sphere, and human conduct is treated as a
case of natural causation. This method is implied in the very
conception of scientific history and was fully in accordance with
Utilitarianism. Men had been complaining of the inadequacy of the
old history, which dealt exclusively with political intrigues and
the military incidents. As history became more scientific the
necessity of attending to social conditions was daily more
evident, though the extent of the change implied is scarcely even
yet realised. The history, for example, of political or religious
changes cannot be fully written without reference to the economic
conditions of the country, and whole systems of investigation are
requisite before those conditions can be tolerably understood.
Nothing could be more in accordance with Utilitarianism than a
thorough acceptance of this view. Nor, again, should any men have
been more free from the temptation of allowing a priori theories
and hasty generalisations to colour their view of facts. The true
attitude of the historical inquirer should be that which was
illustrated in science by Darwin. On the one side, he must
collect as large as possible a store of facts, observed as
impartially and accurately as possible. On the other side, he
must be constantly but cautiously generalising; endeavouring to
fit the facts in their true order; to discover what formulae
serve to 'colligate' them satisfactorily; and always to assign
causes which are both real and adequate, such that their
existence can be verified, and that, if they exist, they will fit
into a reasoned theory. But his theories must be tentative and
liable to constant revision. They may be suggestive even if not
established, but in so complex an inquiry they must be regarded
as being only a relative or approximate truth.
    Briefly, then, the historian should aim at providing
materials for a 'sociology,' but be on his guard against
supposing for a moment that such a science now exists or can ever
be raised to a level with the fully developed sciences. The word
corresponds to an ideal aim, not to an established fact. It is
important to regard history scientifically, though we cannot hope
for a complete science of history. It simply means that we must
regard the history of man as the history of the gradual
development of the individual and of society by forces dimly
perceived, not capable of accurate measurement, but yet working
regularly and involving no abrupt or discontinuous intervention.
    If Grote's history be really a 'model,' it was because he
virtually accepted such limitations. Historians should admit that
they are still in the stage of collecting the facts upon which
any wide generalisations are still premature. Grote was a student
of philosophy; he had, like Mill, been impressed by Comte, though
he never, like Mill, took Comte for a prophet. He discussed early
beliefs and institutions, and he certainly supposed his history
to have important political implications. But a cautious
intellect and a desire for a solid groundwork of fact restrained
him from excessive theorising, and prevented his prejudices from
overpowering his candour. So far, he represented the best
Utilitarian spirit, and obeyed what was, or at least should have
been, their essential canon: to make sure of your facts before
you lay down your theories. They wished to apply scientific
methods to history, as to law, political economy, ethics, and
psychology: and, upon their view, the first condition of success
was a sufficient accumulation of facts. Yet, as has abundantly
appeared, they had been little disposed to confine themselves to
this preliminary stage. They were too ready to assume that the
sciences could be constituted off hand, and to accept convenient
postulates as absolute truths. They had not only pointed out, but
taken possession of, the promised land. Their premature dogmatism
showed the weakness of their trusting their assumptions. The
result to philosophy of history may be illustrated from the
remarkable writer, who, in the period of Mill's philosophic
supremacy, attempted to lay its foundation.

 III. HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE

    Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862) represents this aspiration by
his History of Civilization in England.
    Buckle(23*) had some qualifications of the rarest kind. He
had been prevented by delicate health from coming into contact
with contemporaries at school and college, and his intellectual
tastes made him abandon a business career. He had from an early
age devoted himself to a life of study. He absorbed enormous
masses of knowledge, learned many languages, and had ranged over
the most varied fields of literature. A most retentive memory and
methodic habits of work gave him a full command of his materials,
and the consciousness of intellectual force suggested a daring
ambition. He proposed to write a general history of civilisation,
though his scheme, as he gradually became aware of the vastness
of his task, narrowed itself to a history of civilisation in
England, with preliminary surveys of other civilisations. Buckle
had been educated in the religious and political atmosphere of
the average middle-class type. Foreign travel and wide reading
had sapped his prejudices, and he had become a Liberal in the
days when J. S. Mill's influence was culminating. Buckle shared
the enthusiasm of the period in which the triumph of Free Trade
and the application of Adam Smith's principles seemed to be
introducing a new era of peace and prosperity and the final
extinction of antiquated prejudice. He cannot be reckoned as a
simple Utilitarian, but he represents the more exoteric and
independent allies of the chief Utilitarian thinker. He accepts
the general principles of Mill's Logic, though his language upon
metaphysical problems implies that his intellect had never been
fully brought to bear upon such questions. The general sympathy
with the Utilitarians is, in any case, unmistakable, and the most
characteristic tenets of the Mill school of speculation are
assumed or defended in his writings. Buckle was thus fitted to
interpret the dominant tendencies of the day, and his literary
ability was fully adequate to the office. He has much of the
clearness and unflagging vivacity of Macaulay, and whatever
defects may be discoverable in his style, no writer was better
qualified to interest readers outside the narrow circle of
professed philosophers. The book was accepted by many readers as
an authoritative manifesto of the scientific spirit which was to
transform the whole intellectual world.
    Buckle's aim is to fill the gap in the Utilitarian scheme by
placing historical science upon a basis as firm as that of the
physical sciences. Statistics, he argues, reveal regularities of
conduct as marked as those which are revealed by the observation
of natural phenomena. He gives a fatalistic turn to this
statement by speaking as though the 'laws' somehow 'overrode' the
individual volitions, instead of simply expressing the uniformity
of the volitions themselves. Fate, it seemed, went round and
compelled a certain number of people every year to commit suicide
or post undirected letters in spite of themselves. Without asking
how far this language, which not unnaturally startled his
readers, might be corrected into a legitimate sense, we may pass
to a further application. The laws by which human conduct is
governed may, he says, be either 'physical' or 'mental,' the
physical having more influence in the early, and the mental in
the later, stages of development. This corresponds to the
distinction, now familiar, between the 'organism' and the
'environment,' and requires an obvious correction. The two sets
of laws refer to two factors present at every stage of human
development. The 'organism' is, from first to last, dependent
upon its 'environment,' but the action of the environment depends
also upon the constitution of the organism. The 'mental' and
'physical,' therefore, do not act separately, but as parts of a
single process. Buckle's language, however, expresses an obvious
truth. As civilisation advances, the importance of the 'mental'
laws in explaining the phenomena increases. The difference
between two savage races may be explained simply by the
difference of their surroundings; but the civilised man may vary
indefinitely, while his dwelling-place remains constant. The
earlier stages are those which, in Buckle's language, are under
the predominant influence of physical laws. Climate, food, and
soil on the one hand, and the 'general aspects of nature' on the
other hand, represent these influences. To show their action at
the dawn of civilisation, Buckle points to India, Egypt, and the
ancient empires in America. In those regions arose great
governments, displaying remarkable coincidences of structure, and
thus suggesting the operation of some ascertainable causes. If we
possessed a complete 'sociology,' these phenomena would clearly
illustrate important laws, working with great uniformity, though
in complete independence, and therefore, it may be inferred,
revealing some general principles upon the origin of governments.
Nothing can present a more legitimate field of inquiry. A great
despotism implies an abundant population, and therefore certain
physical conditions, geographical and climatic -- as the
existence of a whale implies an open sea and plenty of food. The
problem, then, is how do the conditions lead to the observed
phenomenon? How do the physical conditions lead to the formation
of these early civilisations? Here Buckle makes a remarkable
assumption. He finds a solution in the teaching of the
economists. An increase of population means a lowering of wages;
or, as he puts it, the question of wages is, 'in the long run,' a
question of population.(24*) Now, in cold countries more food is
required, and the food is harder to procure than in the hot.(25*)
Hence population will increase faster in hot countries, and wages
will in them tend to be low. The case of Ireland confirms or
extends the theory. There, cheap food does what general fertility
does in India. The potato, more than the 'scandalous
misgovernment,' is the most active cause of Irish poverty. Cheap
food, then, means low wages. The result, startling for an
enthusiastic free-trader, suggests a confusion. An increase of
population on a given area may lower wages; but it does not
follow that a larger population must be worse off when the area
is more productive. He ought to show that the Indian population
must be in greater excess; he has only shown that it may be
positively greater. There is no proof that it will increase at
all when the 'checks' are once operative, or increase in a
greater ratio to its support. What is the real relation of cause
and effect? Did Irishmen become poor because they had cheap food,
or take to cheap food because they were poor? The food enabled
them, no doubt, to support a larger number of poor, and in a more
precarious position. When the potato failed they could not
substitute wheat. That is enough to confute the hasty assumption
that cheap food is a panacea for poverty, but does not prove that
plenty necessarily causes poverty. There is another step to be
taken. Ricardo now supplements Malthus. He had shown that the
whole wealth of a country must be divided into wages, rent,
profit, and interest, while interest is proportional to profit.
Now, in India, interest and rent have been enormously high;
therefore wages are low and profits high.(26*) A high rate of
interest, however, may show that capital is scarce and payment
precarious. The moneylender may extort high interest from the
peasant, and yet the aggregate of profits may be small, and the
whole country miserably poor. Ricardo's doctrine assumes that the
wages of the labourer are advanced by the capitalist. It does not
apply to a population of village communities, where the
differentiation of classes has not yet taken place.(27*)
    Buckle, however, does not trouble himself with such
difficulties. The great empires are supposed to have arisen from
the growth of a rich class, whose wealth has enabled them to gain
political power. No doubt the despots had great wealth in poor
countries; but it does not appear that they owed it to the
development of a great class of rich capitalists, or even that
such a class existed. The objection to Buckle's method is
apparent. In the first place, it takes for granted the existence
of a complex industrial organisation as an antecedent to the
growth of the despotism. The system under which the capitalist,
the labourer, and the landowner share profits, wages, and rent,
the whole machinery of exchange and competition, is postulated as
though it represented a necessary state, even in the early stages
of civilisation. That was a natural application of the necessary
assumption of the orthodox political economy. It professed to
deduce its conclusions from the laws of human nature common to
all men in all ages. They were therefore as valid in the earliest
as in the latest time, and explain the causes as well as the
consequences of social development; and hence it follows that the
'mental laws' can be excluded. Since the organism is constant,
all differences are due to differences of environment, or, in
Buckle's language, to the 'physical laws.' 'In India,' he says,
'slavery, abject slavery, was the natural state of the great body
of the people; it was the state to which they were doomed by
physical laws utterly impossible to resist.'(28*) In Europe, as
he elsewhere puts it,(29*) man is stronger than nature; out of
Europe nature is stronger than man. Man is in one case the slave,
and in the other the master of the physical forces. That is to
say, that in the earlier stages we may argue directly from the
'environment' to the 'organism.' The hopeless slavery to which so
many millions have been doomed is a direct and inevitable result
of the 'physical laws,' that is, of the climate, soil, and food.
We are therefore dispensed from any inquiry into the character of
the organism itself and the 'mental' laws implied in its
constitution; or we take for granted that the laws which regulate
the more developed organism are absolute and permanent, and may
therefore explain the earliest stages of growth.(30*)
    Thus the inquiry into the nature of the social organisation,
into the primitive institutions out of which the empires have
grown, is virtually set aside. Because the 'mental laws' work so
uniformly they may be neglected. We are left with the bare result
that great empires have grown up under appropriate physical
conditions, and they are all lumped together as 'despotisms.'
That is to emphasise a remarkable set of facts, but not to make
them more intelligible. The facts, that is, reveal a remarkable
uniformity in the social organism; but that does not show what is
the nature of its organisation. If we know that, we shall be able
to understand the differences and the way in which similar forces
have worked under varying conditions. Buckle's leap at a
generalisation so far distracts attention from the most fruitful
line of inquiry. Malthus and Ricardo will solve the problem
offhand. The simple coincidence of despotism and fertility
entitles us to set them down as cause and effect, without further
analysis of the precise mode of operation.
    Buckle's next step illustrates the same point. The 'physical'
laws have thus determined the distribution. They also influence
religion, art, and literature by the action of 'aspects of
nature' upon the imagination. The powers of nature, as he oddly
puts it,(31*) 'have worked immense mischief.' They generate
superstition on one side, as they generated slavery on the other.
Here Buckle's doctrine is connected with Comte's. He accepted, as
he says elsewhere,(32*) Comte's conclusions as to the earliest
stage of the human mind. The man ignorant of scientific laws
attributes all phenomena to 'supernatural causes.' Comte was only
putting into a compact formula a theory more or less assumed by
his predecessors. Superstition represents a necessary stage in
the intellectual development of the race. It embodies the crude
hypotheses of an early stage which have been falsified by later
experience. They continue to exist, however, when they have long
been untenable to educated minds; and Buckle's remarks may help
to explain their vitality. The 'aspects of nature' represent the
impression made by apparently irregular phenomena. Superstition
thrives where men's lives are at the mercy of events which cannot
be foreseen. One special and characteristic instance is the
influence of earthquakes. Spain, Portugal, and Italy are the
European countries in which earthquakes are most frequent, and
are also the countries in which superstition has been most rife.
The excessive stimulus to the imagination has led to the
collateral result that while these countries have produced all
the greatest artists, they have (with the partial exception of
Italy) produced no great names in science.(33*) The principle
that superstition is fostered by such conditions may well be
illustrated by these facts. Hume had remarked that the events
which to good reasoners were the 'chief difficulties in admitting
a supreme intelligence' were to the vulgar 'the sole arguments
for it.'(34*) Buckle might well extend the argument. But to say
that earthquakes 'cause' Spanish superstition is a bold
generalisation. It is an application of Mill's canon of simple
agreement. Earthquakes and superstition coexist in two or three
districts; therefore earthquakes are the cause of
superstition.(35*) On Buckle's own showing, earthquakes are only
one of countless conditions which may produce superstition. Why
is this special condition to be isolated? If Spain is now
superstitious, must not that be due to the concurrence of
innumerable causes? Have not other countries been steeped in the
profoundest superstition though they had no earthquakes? How,
indeed, is the amount of superstition in a country to be
measured? If we were to explain a particular superstition by the
apparent irregularity of the phenomena concerned -- the belief in
an earth-shaking deity, for example -- the explanation might be
adequate. The objection rises when it is presented as a general
scientific formula. Since 'superstition' is a universal incident
of early stages of human thought, it is clearly not explicable by
the phenomena of special districts. That may be an instructive
example, but cannot give the general law. It is illegitimate to
single out the particular condition as if it were the sole cause.
The main point, however, is again the mode of arguing from the
environment to the organism. The argument from the environment to
the organism, from the earthquakes to superstition, has then an
obvious limit. The constant condition can only explain the
constant qualities. The palpable fact is that the same country
has been occupied by races of most different characters.
Freethinking flourishes where there was once abject superstition,
and therefore the country cannot by itself explain the
superstition. When, for example, Buckle explains the artistic
temperament of Greeks or Italians by the physical
characteristics, he is no doubt assigning a real cause, but
obviously a cause insufficient to explain the singular changes,
the efflorescence and the decay of artistic production in either
country. One result is characteristic. The differences are often
explained by 'heredity' or the inheritance by races of qualities
not developed by their present environment, and essentially
dependent upon the previous social evolution. Buckle fully admits
that the question of 'heredity' is not settled by scientific
inquiry.(36*) He infers, and I suppose rightly, that we cannot
assume that there is any organic difference between an infant
born in the most civilised country and one born in the most
barbarous region. Still, he 'cordially subscribes' to Mill's
protest against explaining differences of character by race.(37*)
So far as this excludes all the influences by which a society is
moulded through inherited beliefs and customs, it sanctions an
erroneous inference. Because race differences are not ultimate,
or indicative of absolute organic distinctions, they are
altogether cast out of account. The existing differences have to
be attributed entirely to the physical surroundings; and the
influence of 'aspects of nature' is summarily adduced to explain
much that is really explicable only through the history of the
organism itself.(38*)
    How far this may have led Buckle to exaggerate the direct
efficacy of mere physical surroundings I cannot further inquire.
At any rate, his whole purpose is to explain the growth of
civilisation, which must, as he perceives, be done by introducing
a variable element. Here, therefore, we have to consider the
state in which the 'mental' become more influential than the
physical laws. Buckle begins by expounding a doctrine of critical
importance. In general terms, he holds that progress depends upon
the intellectual factor. A similar doctrine had been emphatically
asserted by Comte, and was, indeed, implied as a fundamental
conception in his whole work. Ideas, he says, govern the world:
'Tout le mécanisme social repose sur les opinions.'(39*) The law
of the 'three stages' is a systematic application of this
doctrine. The doctrine, again, recognises an undeniable truth.
Man is dependent throughout upon his environment. That, in a
sense, remains constant. The savage lives in the same world as
the civilised man. But every step of knowledge implies a change
in the man's relations to the world. His position is determined
not simply by the 'physical laws,' but by his knowledge of the
laws. The discovery of iron or of electricity makes his world, if
not the world, different; and the whole system of knowledge
corresponds to an ultimate condition of his life. His knowledge,
therefore, is an essential factor in the problem. The rationalism
of the eighteenth century and the later progress of science had
of course emphasised this truth. The natural sciences represent
the intellectual framework, which steadily grows and at every
stage gives a final determinant of all human activity.
Superstitions and theology in general correspond to the erroneous
theories which are gradually dispelled as we construct a
definitive and verifiable base of solid knowledge. But is the
scientific progress not only the ultimate but the sole factor in
all social development? Man is a complex being, with an emotional
as well as an intellectual nature, which, proximately at any
rate, determines his conduct. How are we to allow for this factor
of the inquiry?(40*)
    Buckle's version of the principle is significant. He begins
by distinguishing 'progress' into 'moral' and
'intellectual.'(41*) Which of these is the important element? Do
men progress in the moral or in the intellectual element? Since,
as we have seen, we cannot assume an improvement in the
individual, the later differences must be ascribed to the
'external advantages' -- to the opinions and so forth of the
society in which the child is educated. In the next place, the
opinions are constantly varying, whereas the 'moral motives' are
singularly constant.(42*) A 'stationary element,' when
surrounding circumstances are unchanged, can only produce a
stationary effect, and hence we must explain civilisation by the
variable agent. Buckle argues that the moral code recognised has
remained unaltered since distant times. The same general rules
are accepted, and no additional articles have been inserted. Then
the great stages of progress especially the growth of religious
toleration and of peace -- have been due to intellectual, not to
moral changes; and, finally, as he thinks, the average man
remains pretty much the same. Some men are good and some bad; but
the good and the bad actions neutralise each other. Their effects
are temporary, while the 'discoveries of great men' are
'immortal,' and contain the 'eternal truths which survive the
shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and
witness the decay of successive religions.'(43*) Buckle, that is,
reserves for the 'eternal truths' of scientific discovery the
enthusiasm which others had lavished upon the eternal truths of
the great religious teachers. The doctrine agrees with the
Utilitarian theories in one respect. Man is supposed to remain On
the whole constant, in his natural capacities and in his moral
qualities. On the other hand, Buckle dwells more emphatically
than Mill upon the spontaneous growth of scientific ideas as the
sole but sufficient force which moulds the destinies of mankind.
From Mill's constant insistence upon the power of association and
the empirical character of all knowledge, it might be inferred
that even scientific progress is precarious and unstable. To
Buckle the development of scientific knowledge seems to be
inevitable, if only the mind is allowed to work freely. The most
conspicuous facts of the day gave force to his conviction. The
enormous changes in the whole constitution of society were due to
the advance of mechanical discoveries and to the triumph of
free-traders. Watt and Adam Smith, not the religious preachers,
represent the real transforming force. The steam-engine has
altered the whole position of the human race. The sermons of
Methodists and Catholics have left the average man just where he
was. Napoleon was a great criminal, and Wilberforce, perhaps, a
great philanthropist. Their influence has been transitory, while
the scientific inventors have set up changes which will continue
to gather force as the ages roll.
    The truth contained in this, again, seems to be Undeniable.
Modify the 'environment' and your organism is modified
throughout. Alter the climate, the soil, the amount of fertile
land, and the whole state of mankind will be altered. That,
again, has been virtually achieved by modern discoveries. Though
the natural forces may be the same, our relation to them has been
altered; and, if more fertile soil has not been wrought into
existence, the fertile soil has been brought, we may say, nearer
to our doors. Moreover, the change has been primarily due to
scientific discovery and not to any moral change; or the moral
changes, whatever they may be, have been the consequence, not the
cause. So far as Buckle emphasised this aspect, he was clearly
insisting upon a truth which requires recognition. The question
is what bearing this has upon the philosophy of history, and
whether it justifies us in discarding the influence of the
'moral' element in building up the social structure.
    The general doctrine leads to the conclusion that the
essential difference between two stages of history is the
difference between the quantity of knowledge possessed and its
diffusion throughout all classes. That is really Buckle's
contention, from which all his conclusions are deducible. The
'totality of human actions,' as he says, is 'governed by the
totality of human knowledge; (44*) or, as he elsewhere puts
it,(45*) the history of every 'civilised country is the history
of its intellectual development.' If early societies are governed
by the 'physical laws,' later societies are governed by the
action of those laws upon our minds, and the action is thus
profoundly modified as our knowledge of the laws extends. The
'environment' has a different relation to us, but remains the
ultimate and independent determinant. If this be the whole truth,
it would follow that we might write the history of mankind by
writing the history of science. All other phenomena would be
simply deducible as corollaries from the state of knowledge.
Comte had suggested that history might be written without
mentioning the names of individuals. On Buckle's assumption,
history may deal simply with the growth of scientific ideas; and,
therefore, we need not take into account the moral ideas or all
the complex system of actions which come under the head of the
will and the emotions in psychological treatises.
    Is it possible to write a history upon such terms? Granting
that knowledge defines the base upon which the whole structure
must repose, Can we abstract from all this considerations of the
way in which men's beliefs are brought to bear upon the
constitution of society? The difficulty becomes obvious as soon
as Buckle turns from his general principle to the historical
application. Mark Pattison,(46*) in his review of the History on
its first appearance, puts the point. Buckle, he says, after
insisting upon the utter inadequacy of the old historical and
metaphysical methods, proceeds to 'exemplify the very method of
writing history which he had condemned.' His account of French
society is, as Pattison says, a 'masterly sketch,' unequalled in
breadth and comprehensiveness of view by any English writer. But,
then, it brings in precisely the elements of individual
influence, and so forth, which Buckle expressly professed to
exclude. I will add nothing to the commendation possessing a
higher authority than my own. Buckle's surveys, not only of
French, but of English, Spanish, and Scottish, I believe, may
fully justify the opinion that his abilities, rightly directed,
might have produced a history surpassing the achievement of any
of his rivals. But the only question with which I am concerned is
the relation of the history to the philosophy. Buckle, if he had
simply written a history of England, might have eclipsed Hallam
or Macaulay in their own line. Did he really inaugurate a better
method of writing history in general? or, if not, what caused the
failure of a man possessed of such singular qualifications?
    A difficulty is suggested even in regard to the purely
scientific development. Buckle speaks with the warmest enthusiasm
of great men, such as Descartes, whose scientific discoveries
revolutionised thought, or Adam Smith,(47*) who, by publishing a
single work, contributed more to human happiness than all the
statesmen and legislators of whom we have an authentic record.
How can this be reconciled with the insignificance of the
individual? A great discovery is necessarily the work of an
individual. No combination of second-rate men could have supplied
the place of a single Newton. It therefore occurs to Buckle that,
after all, the individual has to be taken into account. If
Descartes and Smith had died of the measles in infancy, progress
would have been arrested. To escape this conclusion, he refers to
the 'spirit of the age,' which would have made the discovery
fruitless at a different period. What is covered by that phrase?
The social influence does not supersede the necessity for
individual genius. Everything that is done must of course be done
by individuals. The 'spirit of the age' must mean such a social
order as fosters discovery; an order, for example, in which so
many men are devoted to scientific inquiry that discovery becomes
certain. The man of genius is still first in the race; but he is
first of many competitors, who, even if he were to die, would
achieve the same result a little later. The individual is still
required, but the importance of any particular individual is so
far diminished. The growth of science cannot be explained, in the
historical sense, without reference to the social order which
leads to the cultivation of science. It is not something which
grows of its own accord outside of society, but supposes the
whole social structure and the moral factor which we are
endeavouring to discard.
    The difficulty affects Buckle's mode of dealing with the
great historical problems. Since progress depends absolutely upon
the growth of science, the one essential is the spirit of
inquiry, or, as he calls it, 'scepticism.' Its natural antagonist
is the 'protective' spirit, which implies servile submission to
authority in matters of opinion or practice. The disastrous
effects of such a spirit are traced in Spain and Scotland. The
'inquisition' and the tyranny of Puritan ministers are its
natural fruits. No one, of course, will deny the evils due to a
suppression of intellectual activity. To exhibit and to denounce
those evils is a task which Buckle performs with admirable
vigour. But, so far, he is merely writing an effective pamphlet
on a large scale. He is denouncing the protective spirit as the
Whig historian denounces Toryism, or rival religious historians
find the evil principle in Protestantism or Popery. The
protective spirit is an abstraction which means a quality of the
whole society considered from one point of view; its relation,
namely, to scientific progress. It cannot be an ultimate cause of
power in itself -- but is a product of many complex conditions.
To consider it impartially, to form an accurate diagnosis of the
disease is the problem for the scientific historian. He should
discover the uniform laws whose working is manifest in the morbid
condition, and, in the case of Spain, render the intellectual
paralysis permanent and incurable. Here Buckle's method becomes
that of the ordinary historian. He refers to the earthquakes and
various physical conditions which apply to the case of Spanish
superstition. We now learn, however, that these physical
influences are 'interwoven with a long chain of other and still
more influential events,' which enable us to trace the steps of
decline with 'unerring certainty.'(48*) We go back, therefore,
both in Spain and Scotland to the political history; to the play
of party and class-interests, which have forced a priesthood at
one time to ally itself with despots, and at another to throw
itself upon the people. The history may be accurate and the facts
alleged are no doubt relevant; but they leave the difficult
problems unsolved. Why, for example, was the Spanish people at
the head of European races in the sixteenth century, and why did
it then suddenly sink into decay? Why did Scotland, sunk in
superstition in the seventeenth century, become, though still the
most superstitious country in Europe, the most energetic and
progressive part of the British empire? To attack such problems
it would, I take it, be necessary to study impartially a vast
variety of social and of what Buckle calls moral questions; to
give weight to a number of 'interwoven' causes, determining the
history of the two races. The facts -- the intellectual
stagnation of Spain and the intolerance of Scottish Puritanism --
imply, as Buckle urges, some general causes. The history shows
them at work, and Buckle's survey brings out many significant
facts. Still, when the protective spirit is hypostatised and made
a kind of independent cause, determining and not determined by
the general social state, we miss the most interesting problem,
or take the solution for granted. What, after all, is the true
secret of this mysterious power? Whence came its vitality? The
evil principle appears like the supernatural sovereign in 'Philip
Beauchamp' or the Demogorgon of Shelley's Prometheus, a cruel
tyrant enforcing false belief -- even so, he requires to be
explained as well as denounced, and we are at least tempted to
ask whether the church and the king must not have discharged some
useful social function; and the creed have embodied some element
of thought and emotion congenial to human nature. That is the
aspect neglected by Buckle.
    One or two conspicuous examples of the result may be
indicated. Buckle has to deal with the French revolution.(49*)
Nobody has been more emphatic in insisting that history should
deal with the facts which illustrate the state of the people
instead of confining itself to court intrigues. Nor could any one
speak more strongly of the misery of the French population before
the revolution. Yet the whole explanation has to be sought in the
purely intellectual causes. The social causes are simply dropped
out of account. The revolution was due to the French
philosophers. Intellectual activity had been entirely suppressed
by the despotism of Louis XIV. The philosophers, he holds,
learned the new doctrine from England. The persecution of the
freethinkers by the later rulers and a servile priesthood forced
the philosophers to attack both the despots, and (unfortunately,
as Buckle holds) to attack Christianity as well. Hence both the
achievements and the incidental evils caused by the final
outbreak. The theory, though strangely inadequate, is a natural
corollary from the doctrine that the history of a nation is the
history of its intellectual development. Voltaire's study of
Locke becomes the efficient cause of a gigantic social change: A
single characteristic, itself the product of many factors, is
made to account for the whole complex process. Still more
significant is his account of the decreasing influence of the
warlike spirit. That, too, must be a product of purely
intellectual causes. Divines have done nothing by preaching, but
intellectual movement has operated in 'three leading ways.'(50*)
The discoveries of gunpowder, of free trade principles, and of
the application of steam to travelling have produced the
peaceable tendencies, which, in Buckle's day, were apparently so
near a final triumph. Let us fully grant what I hope is true,
that this corresponds to a truth; that the various forces which
have brought men together may ultimately conduce to peace; and,
moreover, that the discoveries of science are among the ultimate
conditions of the most desirable of all changes. Does this enable
us to abstract from the social movement? Gunpowder, according to
Buckle, facilitated the differentiation of the military from the
other classes. That already assumes a process only intelligible
through the social history. Buckle tells us that 'divines' have
done nothing. If he means that they have not persuaded nations,
or not even tried to persuade them, to turn the second cheek, he
is unanswerable. Religion, as he says elsewhere,(51*) is an
'effect,' not a cause of human improvement. It can, in fact, be
an original cause only on the hypothesis of a supernatural
intervention. It must be an 'effect' in the sense that it is a
product of human nature under all the conditions. If by religion
is meant simply the belief in fictitious beings, it may be
considered as simply an obstruction to scientific advance; and
the priesthood, as Buckle generally seems to hold, is the gang of
impostors who turn it to account. In any case, the 'moral'
teaching of priests cannot be the ultimate cause of moral
improvement. Yet no one, it might be supposed, could explain the
history of the warlike sentiment in Europe without taking into
account the influence embodied in the church. That the Catholic
church represented a great principle of cohesion; that it was an
organisation which enabled the men of intellect to exercise an
influence over semi-barbarous warriors, are admitted facts which
the historian is at least bound to consider. At whatever period
the body may have become corrupt, it is an essential fact in the
social processes which preceded the invention of gunpowder, and
certainly the discoveries of Watt and Adam Smith. Buckle, as a
rule, treats the church simply as an upholder of superstition. He
ridicules the historians who believed in absurd miracles in 'what
are rightly termed the dark ages,'(52*) and declares summarily
that 'until doubt began, progress was impossible.' Yet Buckle
would certainly have admitted that there was some progress
between the heptarchy and the reformation.
    The truth which his method compels him to neglect seems to be
obvious. The movement of religious thought represents forces not
to be measured by the quantity of effete superstitions which it
contains. The religion corresponds to the development of the
instincts which determine the whole social structure. The general
moral axioms -- love your neighbour, and so forth -- may, as
Buckle urges, remain unaltered; but the change in the ideals of
life and the whole attitude of men to each other takes place in
the religious sphere. If Christianity does not correspond to a
force imposed from without, it may still correspond to the
processes of thought by which sympathy has extended and men been
drawn into comparative unity and harmony. To treat the power of
religion as simply a product of ignorant superstition is to be
unable to understand the history of the world. So much Buckle
might have learned from Comte in spite of the later vagaries of
positivism.
    Another collateral conclusion marks Buckle's position. As a
historian of political progress he is constantly dwelling upon
the importance of individual action. The tolerant policy of
Richelieu, the despotic system of Louis XIV, and so forth, are
the great aids or impediments to human progress. How is this
reconcilable with the doctrines that individual action is nothing
and the spontaneous growth of knowledge everything? In answer we
are referred to the great general causes, or to the protective
spirit or the spirit of the age, which really govern the whole
process in spite of superficial and transitory causes. What
precisely is meant by these abstractions? To what does the
protective spirit in politics owe its malign persistence? What,
in short, is the source and true nature of the power of
government? The answer is, that to Suckle, as to the
Utilitarians, government represents a kind of external force;
something imposed upon the people from without; a 'sovereign,' in
Austin's sense, who can never originate or impel, though he can
coerce and suppress. He chooses the history of England for his
subject, as he tells us, because England has been 'less affected
than any other country by the two main sources of interference,
namely, the authority of government and the influence of
foreigners.'(53*) Both are treated as 'interferences' from
without, which distort the natural development. English history
is interesting not because its political constitution is a most
characteristic outgrowth of its social state, but because all
government is simply an interference, and in England has had a
minimum influence. Consistently with this, he attacks the opinion
that progress has ever been due to government. Government is, of
course, necessary to punish crime and prevent anarchy;(54*) but
even its successful efforts are 'altogether negative'; and, even
where its intentions have been good, it has been generally
injurious. Briefly, government is powerful for evil, and the one
principle is that rulers should have a 'very little' power and
exercise it 'very sparingly.'(55*) At times he is inclined to
deny all influence to government. Speaking of Scotland, he
remarks that though bad government can be extremely injurious for
a time, it can 'produce no permanent mischief.'(56*) 'So long as
the people are sound,' he says, 'there is life and will be
reaction.... But if the people are unsound all hope is gone and
the nation perishes.' What, then, makes the people 'sound'? Is
not this a tacit admission of the importance of the moral factor?
Has not the religion of a nation some influence, and sometimes
perhaps an influence for good, upon its morality? Puritanism in
Scotland was associated with gross superstition; was it not also
an expression of the moral convictions which preserved the
'soundness' of the race? Catholicism in Spain is still, according
to Buckle, associated with a high moral standard; but this has
'availed the Spaniards' nothing,(57*) because it has suppressed
intellectual progress. It has surely been of some use if it has
preserved their virtue. But, in any case, what is the explanation
of the power of government which can thus destroy the 'soundness'
or morality and ruin the fortunes of a people? Buckle's theory
might apply to the case of a nation conquered by a foreign
tyrant. He denounces conquerors in the old tone as pests and
destroyers of men, who pass their whole lives in increasing human
misery.(58*) Yet conquest has been a factor in the development of
all nations, and Buckle himself argues that the Norman conquest
was an essential step in establishing the liberties of
Englishmen.(59*) It is still more difficult to suppose that a
government which is the growth of a people's own requirements can
be simply mischievous. Without trying to solve such puzzles, we
may say that the whole doctrine seems to imply a misconception of
the relations between the political and the social and moral
constitution of a nation. No satisfactory theory can be formed,
when it is assumed that the function of government is simply to
keep the peace instead of inquiring historically what functions
it has actually discharged. When Buckle regards government like
the 'physical laws' as the cause of pure mischief, he ceases to
be scientific and becomes after a fashion a moralist, denouncing
instead of explaining.
    The connection of this with the do-nothing doctrine which
Buckle accepts in its fullest form is obvious. The less
government the better is the natural formula for a disciple of
Adam Smith. What is here important is the connection of the
doctrine with Buckle's first principles. The political order
cannot be thus treated as if it were an independent power
impinging from without upon a natural order; it is a product of
the whole organism, and to denounce it as simply bad is really
meaningless. It is part of the essential structure, and therefore
we cannot properly abstract from the other parts of the system.
This or that regulation, or this or that wheel of the political
machinery may be superfluous or mischievous; but the question can
only be decided by regarding the system as a whole, and not by
treating the ruling power as something separable. Its
interference has to be treated as abnormal or as simply
mischievous, and yet as of vital importance in history. It
becomes a mystery simply because we do not investigate its nature
with due reference to its functions in the body politic. In other
words, Buckle becomes incoherent because his method induces him
from the start to neglect what is implied when society is
described as organic. He was speaking an indisputable truth when
he said that society depends throughout upon the 'environment' in
the physical laws. It is not less true to say that as the
intellectual progress develope, the recognition of those laws
supplies an ultimate and unchangeable condition of the whole
process of social growth. All civilisation depends absolutely, as
he asserts, upon the corresponding state of knowledge. The error
is in the assumption that we can therefore omit the consideration
of the complex laws which govern the growth of the organism
itself. The individualism which he shares with the Utilitarians
makes him blind to the importance of the line of inquiry which
was to show its power in the following period. If the primitive
despotisms are set down simply as a necessary result of 'physical
laws,' it is superfluous to inquire into the real nature of the
institutions which they imply, or to gain any light upon the
working of similar principles elsewhere. When the whole
ecclesiastical and political constitution of later ages is set
down simply as a relic of barbarism, and the religious and social
instincts which are elaborated through them as simply products of
ignorance, the process becomes unintelligible. If, therefore,
Buckle was recognising a real condition of sound investigation,
he condemned in advance the very kind of inquiry which has proved
most fruitful. If he did more in his purely historical inquiries
it was because he then forgot his philosophy and had to take into
account the considerations which he had pronounced to be
irrelevant. That, I believe, is the reason why Buckle, in spite
of his surpassing abilities, did not make any corresponding mark
upon later investigations. He was trying to frame a philosophy of
history upon principles which really make the formation of a
coherent philosophy impossible. Briefly, then, Buckle shared the
ambition of the Utilitarians to make all the moral sciences
scientific. So far as his writing strengthened the leaning to a
scientific tendency he was working in the right direction.
Unfortunately he also shared their crude assumptions: the
'individualism' which ignores the social factor, and deduces all
institutions from an abstract 'man'; the tendency to explain the
earlier from the later stages; and the impression that 'laws of
nature' are to be unravelled by a summary method of discovering
co-existences of concrete phenomena; and was therefore led to
substitute hasty generalisations for that elaborate study of the
growth of institutions and beliefs which has been the most marked
tendency of sociological inquiry during the last generation. So
far he shares and illustrates the real weakness of the
Utilitarians, the premature attempt to constitute a science when
we can only be labouring effectually by trying to determine the
data.
    Here I may try to indicate, though I cannot develop, a
general conclusion. What was the true significance of the
Utilitarian paradox the indifference to history combined with the
appeal to experience? History in the narrower sense is a
particular case of evolution; and if it could be made scientific,
would formulate the laws by which the existing institutions,
political, ecclesiastical, and industrial, have grown out of
earlier states. The importance of taking into account the
'genetic' point of view, of inquiring into the growth as well as
the actual constitution of things, is obvious in all the sciences
which are concerned with organic life. Though we cannot analyse
the organism into its ultimate constituent factors, we can learn
something by tracing its development from simpler forms. The
method is applicable to biology as well as to sociology; and as
sciences extended, its importance became manifest. Some theory of
evolution was required in every direction, and must obviously be
necessary if we are to carry out systematically the principles of
the uniformity and continuity of nature. The difficulty of the
Utilitarians was all along that theories of evolution appeared to
them to involve something mystical and transcendental. They
proposed to analyse everything till they could get to single
aggregations of facts, or in their sense ideal, that is, to a
thoroughgoing atomism. This leads to the paradox indicated by
Hume's phrase. The atoms, things and thoughts, must be completely
separate and yet invariably conjoined. Causation becomes mere
sequence or conjunction, and 'experience' ceases to offer any
ground for anticipation. I have tried to show how this affected
the Utilitarians in every subject; in their philosophical, legal,
ethical, and economical speculations; and how they always seem to
be in need of, and yet always to reject by anticipation, some
theory of evolution. To appeal to 'experience' they have to make
the whole universe incoherent, while to get general laws they
have to treat variable units as absolutely constant. 'External
circumstances' must account for all variation, though it is
difficult to see how everything can be 'external.' The difficulty
has now appeared in history proper, and the attempt to base a
sociology upon a purely individualist assumption. This may help
to explain the great influence of the Darwinian theories. They
marked the point at which a doctrine of evolution could be allied
with an appeal to experience. Darwin appealed to no mystical
bond, but simply to verifiable experience. He postulated the
continuance of processes known by observation, and aimed at
showing that they would sufficiently explain the present as
continuous with the past. There was nothing mystical to alarm
empiricists, and their consequent adoption of Darwinism implied a
radical change in their methods and assumptions. The crude
empiricism was transformed into evolutionism. The change marked
an approximation to the conceptions of the opposite school when
duly modified, and therefore in some degree a reconciliation.
'Intuitions' no longer looked formidable when they could be
regarded as developed by the race instead of mysteriously
implanted in the individual mind. The organic correlations were
admissible when they were taken to imply growth instead of
supernatural interference, and it was no longer possible to
regard 'natural kinds' as mere aggregates of arbitrarily
connected properties. I need not ask which side really gained by
the change, whether Darwinism inevitably leads to some more
subtle form of atomism, or whether the acceptance of any
evolution does not lead to idealism -- to a belief in a higher
teleology than Paley's -- and the admission that mind or 'spirit'
must be the ultimate reality. Such problems may be treated by the
philosopher of the future. Without anticipating his verdict, I
must try to indicate the final outcome of what passed for
philosophy with the Utilitarians.

NOTES:

1. See Memoir by Mrs Austin prefixed to the edition of his
Lectures, edited by Mr R. Campbell (1869).

2. Jurisprudence, p. 701.

3. For Austin's admiration of Hobbes see especially the long note
in Jurisprudence, p. 186, etc.

4. Jurisprudence, p. 238.

5. Ibid. p. 791.

6. Jurisprudence, p. 336.

7. Cp. Mill's Dissertations, iii, 237, etc.

8. Jurisprudence, p. 330.

9. Jurisprudence, p. 303. Austin makes certain qualifications
which I need not notice.

10. Austin refers his readers to Brown's essay on 'Cause and
Effect'; and takes Brown to have proved 'beyond controversy' that
the faculty called the 'will' is just nothing at all. --
Jurisprudence, pp. 424-25.

11. Mill touches this point characteristically in his review of
Austin, but does not discuss the validity of the logic.

12. Edinburgh Review, October, 1861.

13. Mill's Dissertations, iii, 206-74, from Edin. Rev. of Oct.
1863.

14. For Lewis see especially the very interesting article in
Bagehot's Works (by Forrest Morgan), 1891, iii, 222-68. His chief
political treatise is A Treatise on Methods' of Reasoning and
Observation in Politics (1852).

15. Methods of Observation, etc., i, 448.

16. Ibid, i., 357.

17. Ibid., ii, 356.

18. Ibid., ii. 370.

19. Mrs Grote's Personal History of George Grote is neither
adequate nor quire accurate. Compare a very useful life by G.
Croom Robertson in Dictionary of National Biography, and the
article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica by William Smith.

20. Bain's J.S. Mill, p. 83.

21. Mrs Grote's Philosophical Radicals of 1832 (1866), p. 28.

22. Introduction to the Study of History (English Translation,
1898), p. 310.

23. Buckle's Life, by Alfred Henry Huth, appeared in 1880. I have
also to call attention to the very able and learned work, Buckle
and his Critics, by John Mackinnon Robertson (1895). Mr Robertson
passes a severe judgment upon a criticism of Buckle which I
contributed to the Fortnightly Review for May 1880, and takes the
opportunity of pointing out some of my manifold shortcomings.
Though his tone is not such as to make an apology easy, I must
state my position frankly. Mr Robertson points out the
measureless inferiority of a book of mine upon the eighteenth
century to Buckle's great performance. He thinks, too, that my
attack was 'unchivalrous' considering the pathetic circumstances
of Buckle's death, and the fact that his work 'seemed to be
sufficiently discredited already.' Now I can quite agree upon one
point. It never entered by head to compare my own abilities with
Buckle's. I could not more have rivalled his history than have
encountered him at chess. It is impossible to speak more
strongly. Why, then, did I presume to criticise? Because I was
not giving my own unaided opinion. I had been interested by a
problem. Like all young men of my time I had been impressed by
the controversial storm which followed the publication of
Buckle's book, and by that which soon afterwards was roused by
the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Many years later,
when Buckle's Life appeared, I was struck by a contrast. Darwin's
speculations had affected every department of thought, and his
influence was still spreading. Buckle's, on the other hand, had
lost much of their interest -- what was the reason? Briefly, as I
thought, and as I still think, that Darwin had supplied a
fruitful suggestion suited to the general movement of thought;
and that Buckle, for want of it, had struck into a wrong path. I
tried in my article to point out the nature of his error. Mr
Robertson's book confirms the truth of my impression as to facts.
Had Buckle continued to interest the leaders of thought, Mr
Robertson would not have given so prominent a position to an old
review article never republished, and which, so far as I know,
had never attracted any particular attention. Mr Robertson's
elaborate survey of recent sociology shows that while some
distinguished writers more or less coincide with Buckle, they
scarcely recognise any indebtedness. That is, I think, because
there was little to recognise. Buckle, in short, as it appeared
to me, had not produced an effect at all comparable to those
produced by Darwin or by Mr Herbert Spencer; and I cannot think
that Mr Robertson accounts for the fact. My own explanation may
of course have been wrong; but I do not see that there was
anything 'unchivalrous' in trying to explain why a man of genius
has not produced an effect proportionate to his powers. Nor can I
see that Buckle's pathetic death made it necessary for me to
modify my language in discussing his philosophy. Upon re-reading
my article I recognise faults which may partly justify Mr
Robertson's resentment. I should certainly have avoided anything
savouring of contempt. I did recognise Buckle's extraordinary
powers, but I forgot clearly to distinguish condemnation of his
opinions from depreciation of the power displayed. Substantially
my view is not changed.

24. Civilisation, i. 49. Note the 'wage fund' in the next page.

25. Ibid. i. 58.

26. Civilisation, p. 69.

27. Mr Robertson holds that Buckle's 'generalisation' is not, as
I 'strangely' represent it, an 'arbitrary application of the
Ricardian law of rent to the society of Ancient India, but
constitutes an elevation of Ricardo's other law of the
subsistence of labour into a broad historic principle.' He points
out, too, that Buckle supposed a previous stage of development,
and thinks that he had appreciated Jones's correction of Ricardo,
in regard to Indian rent. (Buckle and his Critics, pp 49, 59 and
see p. 138) I can only say that I adhere to my statement. Buckle
expressly quotes Ricardo, and makes the origin of civilisations
depend upon the threefold division. That I hold to be
unjustifiable, and to be false in fact. the 'broad historical
principle' seems to be simply the fact that great empires rose
where physical condition, including, of course, fertility, were
favourable. Buckle may deserve credit for dwelling upon the fact.
I only say that his explanation does not explain, and that it is
impossible to lay down as unconditionally true that cheap food
involves cheap wages. If one is to have a theory, why should we
not say that empires were made by conquerers instead of by
capitalists?

28.  Civilisation, i. 73.

29. Ibid. i. 222.

30. Buckle, I may notice, thinks Brown's essay upon Causation one
of the greatest works of the century and a statement of the
principles, derived ultimately from Hume, upon which the 'best
inquirers into these matters take their stand.' (Civilisation,
ii. 460 n). This, I take it, explains his tendency to take a
simple statement of fact for a 'law'. The most curious instance
of the confusion is the remark (Civilisation, i. 155) that
physiologists have never been able to discover the cause of the
equality of the number of male and female births. Statisticians
have now answered the question by showing that the proportion is
20 to 21. Obviously they have not answered the question at all.
the have only ascertained the facts. Buckle partly admits this;
and yet he seems to think that the statement somehow indicates a
new method of historical inquiry.

31. Civilisation, i. 236.

32. Civilisation, i. 342 n.

33. Ibid. i. 112.

34. Natural History of Religion, sec. vi. Mr Robertson attacks me
for my criticisms of Buckle's assertion of the deductive
character of Scottish philosophers. I cannot go into the
question, but I make one remark. He quotes the first sentence of
Hume's Natural History to prove that Hume was a deist when he
wrote it, and says that this is implied through the whole essay.
Now Hume's most serious attack upon theology, the Dialogues, was
written by 1751, though posthumously published. The Natural
History appeared in 1757. The deistic phrases obviated the
necessity for leaving it also for posthumous publication.

35. A curious illustration is given by Mr Robertson (p. 140). The
Japanese it has been said, are less superstitious than their
neighbours, and yet more exposed to earthquakes. If Buckle's
theory means that superstition necessarily follows earthquakes,
the fact seems to contradict the theory. So Mr Robertson seems to
take it, for he gives an explanation. The Japanese do not suffer
from earthquakes because they build slighter house. If so,
earthquakes, it surely might be urged, do not produce
superstition, but rational precaution. If, on the other hand, the
Spaniards have not modifies their architecture, that would surely
prove that they have not been much impressed by earthquakes. The
case seems to me to prove simply the rashness of any such hasty
guesses. Buckle's early critics were misguided enough to deny the
facts alleged, and so gave him a triumph.

36. Civilisation, i. 161.

37. Civilisation, i. 37 n.

38. Mr Robertson reproves me for not giving the passage in which
Buckle says that the question of hereditary influence is still
unsettled. Probably I should have recognised this more clearly. I
did, however, say that Buckle held that the superiority of the
civilised to the barbarian infant was 'not proved'. I said also
that I thought that Buckle was justified for his purpose in
neglecting the possibility of a superiority. He says, in the
passage quoted above, that we have no right to assume such a
change as an increase of brain capacity. I took it that for any
historical period we may assume equality. The brain of a modern
Englishman is not presumably superior to the brain of an
Athenian. Evolution of that kind may be neglected by the
historian of civilisation. The evolution, which I did take him to
neglect, was the moral or social evolution, which is compatible
with approximate identity of the brain or the innate faculties.
Buckle, I said, shared the error of the Utilitarians who assumed
moral progress to consist, not in a changed estimate of
happiness, but simply in a better knowledge of the means of
attaining it. Buckle's identification of progress with increase
of knowledge involved, I said, the same error. The change is
regarded as superficial or 'external'. Meanwhile my argument,
which Mr Robertson attacks, about the fallacy of arguing from the
fixed environment to the varying organism applied to such cases
as the inference from earthquakes to superstition or from climate
to aesthetic tendencies. Such a generalisation, taken as an
explanation of superstition, generally implies, as I held, an
inadequate appreciation of the social or moral evolution. Perhaps
I did not put the point clearly or accurately, and, if so, I
regret it.

39. Philosophie Positive, 1852, i, 44, and cp. Ibid. iv. 648,
etc.

40. Mr Herbert Spencer raises this question in a criticism of
Comte, contained in a pamphlet upon the 'Classification of the
Sciences.' See Mill's remarks upon this in his Auguste Comte and
Positivism, pp. 34, 43, 102, 114. The controversy between Mr
Spencer and Comte lies beyond my province.

41. Civilisation, p. 152.

42. Ibid. pp. 160-63.

43. Civilisation, p. 206.

44. Civilisation, p. 209.

45. Ibid. p. 354.

46. Essays (1889), ii, 422. (Essay on Buckle, reprinted from
Westminster Review of 1857.)

47. Civilisation, i. 197.

48. Civilisation, ii. 9.

49. On this point Mr Robertson virtually agrees with me, though
he attaches less importance to it.

50. Civilisation, i. 185.

51. Civilisation, p. 235.

52. Civilisation, pp. 248, 283, 289, 306. He occasionally admits
that the church protected the poor and was useful in its time.
ibid, pp. 462, 559.

53. Civilisation, i. 213.

54. Ibid. i. 257.

55. Civilisation, i. 264.

56. Ibid. ii. 274.

57. Ibid. ii. 145, 146.

58. Ibid. i. 729.

59. Civilisation, i. 563.