SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 533 



given space and time, is entirely the effect of the general cir 

 cumstances of society, but that every particular murder is so 

 too : that the individual murderer is, so to speak, a mere in 

 strument in the hands of general causes ; that he himself has 

 no option, or if he has, and chose to exercise it, some one 

 else would be necessitated to take his place : that if any one 

 of the actual murderers had abstained from the crime, some 

 person who would otherwise have remained innocent, would 

 have committed an extra murder to make up the average. 

 Such a corollary would certainly convict any theory which 

 necessarily led to it of absurdity. It is obvious, however, that 

 each particular murder depends, not on the general state of 

 society only, but on that combined with causes special to the 

 case, which are generally much more powerful : and if these 

 special causes, which have greater influence than the general 

 ones in causing every particular murder, have no influence on 

 the number of murders in a given period, it is because the 

 field of observation is so extensive as to include all possible 

 combinations of the special causes all varieties of individual 

 character and individual temptation compatible with the general 

 state of society. The collective experiment, as it may be 

 termed, exactly separates the effect of the general from that of 

 the special causes, and shows the net result of the former : but 

 it declares nothing at all respecting the amount of influence of 

 the special causes, be it greater or smaller, since the scale of 

 the experiment extends to the number of cases within which 

 the effects of the special causes balance one another, and dis 

 appear in that of the general causes. 



I will not pretend that all the defenders of the theory 

 have always kept their language free from this same con 

 fusion, and have shown no tendency to exalt the influence 

 of general causes at the expense of special. I am of 

 opinion, on the contrary, that they have done so in a very 

 great degree, and by so doing have encumbered their theory 

 with difficulties, and laid it open to objections, which do not 

 necessarily affect it. Some, for example (among whom is 

 Mr. Buckle himself), have inferred, or allowed it to be sup 

 posed that they inferred, from the regularity in the recurrence 



