SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 535 



preceding chapter. The intellectual changes are the most 

 conspicuous agents in history, not from their superior force, 

 considered in themselves, but hecause practically they work 

 with the united power belonging to all three.* 



3. There is another distinction often neglected in the 

 discussion of this subject, which it is extremely important 

 to observe. The theory of the subjection of social progress to 

 invariable laws, is often held in conjunction with the doctrine, 

 that social progress cannot be materially influenced by the 

 exertions of individual persons, or by the acts of governments. 

 But though these opinions are often held by the same persons, 

 they are two very different opinions, and the confusion between, 

 them is the eternally recurring error of confounding Causation 

 with Fatalism. Because whatever happens will be the effect of 

 causes, human volitions among the rest, it does not follow that 

 volitions, even those of peculiar individuals, are not of great 

 efficacy as causes. If any one in a storm at sea, because about 

 the same number of persons in every year perish by shipwreck, 

 should conclude that it was useless for him to attempt to save 



* I have been assured by an intimate friend of Mr. Buckle that he would 

 not have withheld his assent from these remarks, and that he never intended to 

 affirm or imply that mankind are not progressive in their moral as well as in 

 their intellectual qualities. &quot;In dealing with his problem, he availed himself 

 of the artifice resorted to by the Political Economist, who leaves out of con 

 sideration the generous and benevolent sentiments, and founds his science on 

 the proposition that mankind are actuated by acquisitive propensities alone,&quot; 

 not because such is the fact, but because it is necessary to begin by treating the 

 principal influence as if it was the sole one, and make the due corrections after 

 wards. &quot; He desired to make abstraction of the intellect as the determining 

 and dynamical element of the progression, eliminating the more dependent set 

 of conditions, and treating the more active one as if it were an entirely inde 

 pendent variable.&quot; 



The same friend of Mr. Buckle states that when he used expressions which 

 seemed to exaggerate the influence of general at the expense of special causes, 

 and especially at the expense of the influence of individual minds, Mr. Buckle 

 really intended no more than to affirm emphatically that the greatest men can 

 not effect great changes in human affairs unless the general mind has been in 

 some considerable degree prepared for them by the general circumstances of 

 the age ; a truth which, of course, no one thinks of denying. And there cer 

 tainly are passages in Mr. Buckle s writings which speak of the influence exer 

 cised by great individual intellects in as strong terms as could be desired. 



