530 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



which is grounded on the doctrine of Free Will, or in other 

 words, on the denial that the law of invariahle Causation holds 

 true of human volitions : for if it does not, the course of 

 history, being the result of human volitions, cannot he a sub 

 ject of scientific laws, since the volitions on which it depends 

 can neither be foreseen, nor reduced to any canon of regularity 

 even after they have occurred. I have discussed this question, 

 as far as seemed suitable to the occasion, in a former chap 

 ter : and I only think it necessary to repeat, that the doctrine 

 of the Causation of human actions, improperly called the 

 doctrine of Necessity, affirms no mysterious nexus, or over 

 ruling fatality : it asserts only that men s actions are the 

 joint result of the general laws and circumstances of human 

 nature, and of their own particular characters ; those characters 

 again being the consequence of the natural and artificial cir 

 cumstances that constituted their education, among which 

 circumstances must be reckoned their own conscious efforts. 

 Any one who is willing to take (if the expression may be per 

 mitted) the trouble of thinking himself into the doctrine as 

 thus stated, will find it, I believe, not only a faithful interpre 

 tation of the universal experience of human conduct, but a 

 correct representation of the mode in which he himself, in every 

 particular case, spontaneously interprets his own experience of 

 that conduct. 



But if this principle is true of individual man, it must be 

 true of collective man. If it is the law of human life, the law 

 must be realized in history. The experience of human affairs 

 when looked at en masse, must be in accordance with it if true, 

 or repugnant to it if false. The support which this a posteriori 

 verification affords to the law, is the part of the case which 

 has been most clearly and triumphantly brought out by Mr. 

 Buckle. f 



The facts of statistics, since they have been made a 

 subject of careful recordation and study, have yielded conclu 

 sions, some of which have been very startling to persons not 

 accustomed to regard moral actions as subject to uniform laws. 

 The very events which in their own nature appear most 

 capricious and uncertain, and which in any individual case no 



