144 Darwinism and Other Essays, 



mate inexplicable agent ; but it is that the mass 

 of men have ever been accustomed to look upon 

 the phenomena of society as upon isolated facts, 

 incapable of any scientific explanation whatever. 

 And this is what might be expected from the 

 great abstruseness and complexity of the subject. 

 Since the science of human actions is the most 

 difficult of all, and since it depends on the sim- 

 pler physical sciences, it was not until these in 

 the course of their development had been purified 

 from the dreamy obscurities of metaphysics that 

 the conception of a universal and undeviating 

 regularity in the succession of historic events 

 was rendered possible. Accordingly, when phys- 

 ical science was yet in its infancy, as in ancient 

 times, there could be no social science. The 

 speculations of Plato upon this subject were but 

 profitless reveries ; and even the admirable " Pol- 

 itics " of Aristotle disclosed " no sense of the pro- 

 gressive tendencies of humanity, nor the slight- 

 est glimpse of the natural laws of civilization." l 

 Coming down even to modern times, we find in 

 the seventeenth century nothing better on the 

 philosophy of history than the puerile " Dis- 

 course" of Bossuet. The profound remarks of 

 Pascal and Leibnitz, in regard to the progress of 



l Comte, Philosophic Positive, tome iv. p. 240. 



