632 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



to be conversant with a subject-matter whose properties are changeable. 

 I do not mean changeable from day to day, but from age to age ; so that 

 not only the qualities of individuals vary, but those of the majority are 

 not the same in one age as in another. 



The principal cause of this peculiarity is the extensive and constant re- 

 action of the effects upon their causes. The circumstances in which man- 

 kind are placed, operating according to their own laws and to the laws 

 of human nature, form the characters of the human beings ; but the human 

 beings, in their turn, mould and shape the circumstances for themselves 

 and for those who come after them. From this reciprocal action there 

 must necessarily result either a cycle or a progress. In astronomy also, 

 every fact is at once effect and cause ; the successive positions of the vari- 

 ous heavenly bodies produce changes both in the direction and in the inten- 

 sity of the forces by which those positions are determined. But in the 

 case of the solar system, these mutual actions bring around again, after a 

 certain mimber of changes, the former state of circumstances ; which, of 

 course, leads to the perpetual recurrence of the same series in an unvarying 

 order. Those bodies, in short, revolve in orbits : but there are (or, con- 

 formably to the laws of astronomy, there might be) others which, instead of 

 an orbit, describe a trajectory — a course not returning into itself. One or 

 other of these must be the type to which human affairs must conform. 



One of the thinkers who earliest conceived the succession of historical 

 events as subject to fixed laws, and endeavored to discover these laws by 

 an analytical survey of history, Vico, the celebrated author of the Scienza 

 ITuova, adopted the former of these opinions. He conceived the phenom- 

 ena of human society as revolving in an orbit; as going through periodic- 

 ally the same series of changes. Though there wei'e not wanting circum- 

 stances tending to give some plausibility to this view, it would not bear 

 a close scrutiny : and those who have succeeded Vico in this kind of spec- 

 ulations have universally adopted the idea of a trajectory or progress, in 

 lieu of an orbit or cycle. 



The words Progress and Progressiveness are not here to be understood 

 as synonymous with improvement and tendency to improvement. It is 

 conceivable that the laws of human nature might determine, and even ne- 

 cessitate, a certain series of changes in man and society, which might not 

 in every case, or which might not on the whole, be improvements. It is 

 my belief, indeed, that the general tendency is, and will continue to be, 

 saving occasional and temporary exceptions, one of improvement ; a tend- 

 ency toward a better and happier state. This, however, is not a question 

 of the method of the social science, but a theorem of the science itself. 

 For our purpose it is sufficient that there is a progressive change both in 

 the character of the human race and in tlieir outward circumstances, so far 

 as moulded by themselves; that in each successive age the principal phe- 

 nomena of society are different fi"om what they were in the age preceding, 

 and still more different from any previous age: the periods which most 

 distinctly mark these successive changes being intervals of one generation, 

 during which a new set of human beings have been educated, have grown 

 up from childhood, and taken possession of society. 



The progressiveness of the human race is the foundation on which a 

 method of philosophizing in the social science has been of late years erect- 

 ed, far superior to either of the two modes which had previously been 

 prevalent, the chemical or experimental, and the geometrical modes. This 

 method, which is now generally adopted by the most advanced thinkers 



