584 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



out " ; l society, as it were, exacting a certain proportion 

 of crime, as it does of suicide, poverty, physical and 

 mental disease, for the maintenance of its equilibrium 

 and as an " alarming " 2 tribute to its stability. The 

 extreme consequences which seemed to flow from this 

 doctrine were not drawn by Quetelet, who believed in a 

 gradual though slow development of human society, and 

 in moral as well as physical causes and influences. They 

 were drawn, however, by what we may term the mathe- 

 matical school of social philosophers, who relied greatly 

 upon the figures collected by Quetelet and confirmed by 

 others. In this country the statistical labours of Quetelet 

 were made known by Sir John Herschel in a brilliant 

 article 3 in the ' Edinburgh Review ' on the " Translation 

 of Quetelet's Letters to Prince Albert on the Theory of 

 Probabilities." They do not seem to have been regarded 

 as detrimental to the moral aspect of human history till 

 23. Henry Thomas Buckle, in his celebrated ' History of 



Buckle. 



Civilisation,' made use of Quetelet's statistics in sup- 



1 ' Sur 1'Homme,' vol. ii. p. 241. thinkers to abandon the popular 



2 Cf. vol. ii. p. 262 ; also conception of freewill, which sees 

 ' Systeme Social' (1848), p. 95, in it merely the absence of causal 

 and the ' Memoire sur la Statistique determinateness, in favour of the 

 Morale' (1848). causal connection of so-called free 



3 Vol. xcii. p. 18. actions with the motives and the 



4 The ' History of Civilisation,' moral character. The subject has 

 vol. i. , appeared in 1857, and was j been very fully discussed by F. A. 



very soon translated in Germany, 

 running in a short time through 

 five editions. There the statistical 

 theories of Quetelet had not made 

 that impression which they made 

 in some other countries. This is 



Lange in his well-known ' History 

 of Materialism ' (Eng. trans, by 

 Thomas, vol. iii. p. 196, &c. ) 

 Lange refers to a remark of the 

 well - known political economist, 

 Prof. Adolph Wagner, who, in his 



explained by the fact that the ( work ' Die Gesetzmiissigkeit in den 



philosophy of Kant, to which scheinbar willkiihrlichen mensch- 



Buckle himself referred in a long lichen Handlungen ' (Hamburg, 



passage in his " Introduction," had . 1864, p. xiii, &c.), mentions the 



long before Quetelet accustomed fact that Quetelet's writings had 



