524 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



of the social progress ; all the other dispositions of our nature 

 which contribute to that progress, being dependent on it for 

 the means of accomplishing their share of the work. Thus 

 (to take the most obvious case first,) the impelling force to 

 most of the improvements effected in the arts of life, is the 

 desire of increased material comfort; but as we can only act 

 upon external objects in proportion to our knowledge of them, 

 the state of knowledge at any time is the limit of the industrial 

 improvements possible at that time ; and the progress of in 

 dustry must follow, and depend on, the progress of knowledge. 

 The same thing may be shown to be true, though it is not 

 quite so obvious, of the progress of the fine arts. Further, as 

 the strongest propensities of uncultivated or half-cultivated 

 human nature (being the purely selfish ones, and those of a 

 sympathetic character which partake most of the nature of 

 selfishness) evidently tend in themselves to disunite mankind, 

 not to unite them, to make them rivals, not confederates ; 

 social existence is only possible by a disciplining of those 

 more powerful propensities, which consists in subordinating 

 them to a common system of opinions. The degree of this 

 subordination is the measure of the completeness of the social 

 union, and the nature of the common opinions determines its 

 kind. But in order that mankind should conform their 

 actions to any set of opinions, these opinions must exist, must 

 be believed by them. And thus, the state of the speculative 

 faculties, the character of the propositions assented to by the 

 intellect, essentially determines the moral and political state 

 of the community, as we have already seen that it determines 

 the physical. 



These conclusions, deduced from the laws of human nature, 

 are in entire accordance with the general facts of history. 

 Every considerable change historically known to us in the 

 condition of any portion of mankind, when not brought about 

 by external force, has been preceded by a change, of propor 

 tional extent, in the state of their knowledge, or in their pre 

 valent beliefs. As between any given state of speculation, and 

 the correlative state of everything else, it was almost always 

 the former which first showed itself; though the effects, no 



