SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 649 



tonian system, but would have had it equally soon ; as tlio sun would have 

 risen just as early to spectators in the plain if there had been no mountain 

 at hand to catch still earlier rays. And so it would be, if truths, like the 

 sun, rose by their own proper motion, without human effort; but not oth- 

 erwise. I believe that if Newton had not lived, the world must have wait- 

 ed for the Newtonian philosophy until there had been another Newton, 

 or his equivalent. No ordinary man, and no succession of ordinary men, 

 could have achieved it. I will not go the length of saying that what New- 

 ton did in a single life, might not have been done in successive steps by 

 some of those who followed him, each singly inferior to him in genius. 

 But even the least of those steps required a man of great intellectual supe- 

 riority. Eminent men do not merely see the coming light from the hill- 

 top, they mount on the hill-top and evoke it; and if no one had ever as- 

 cended thither, the light, in many cases, might never have risen upon the 

 plain at all. Philosophy and religion ai'e abundantly amenable to general 

 causes ; yet few will doubt that, had there been no Socrates, no Plato, and 

 no Aristotle, there would have been no philosophy for the next two thou- 

 sand years, nor in all probability then; and that if there had been no 

 Christ, and no St. Paul, there would have been no Christianity. 



The point in which, above all, the influence of remarkable individuals is 

 decisive, is in determining the celerity of the movement. In most states 

 of society it is the existence of great men which decides even whether there 

 shall be any progress. It is conceivable that Greece, or that Christian 

 Europe, might have been progressive in certain periods of their history 

 through general causes only: but if thei-e had been no Mohammed, would 

 Arabia have produced Avicenna or Averroes, or Caliphs of Bagdad or of 

 Cordova ? In determining, however, in what manner and order the prog- 

 ress of mankind shall take place if it take place at all, much less depends 

 on the character of individuals. There is a sort of necessity established in 

 this respect by the general laws of human nature — by the constitution of 

 the human mind. Certain truths can not be discovered, nor inventions 

 made, unless certain others have been made first; certain social improve- 

 ments, from the nature of the case, can only follow, and not precede, others. 

 The order of human progress, therefore, may to a certain extent have defi- 

 nite laws assigned to it : while as to its celerity, or even as to its taking 

 place at all, no generalization, extending to the human species generally, can 

 possibly be made ; but only some very precarious approximate generaliza- 

 tions, confined to the small portion of mankind in whom there has been 

 any thing like consecutive progress within the historical period, and de- 

 duced from their special position, or collected from their particular history. 

 Even looking to the manner of ])rogress, the order of succession of social 

 states, there is need of great flexibility in our generalizations. The limits 

 of variation in the possible development of social, as of animal life, are a 

 subject of which little is yet understood, and are one of the great problems 

 in social science. It is, at all events, a fact, that different portions of man- 

 kind, under the influence of different circumstances, have developed them- 

 selves in a more or less different manner and into different forms; and 

 among these determining circumstances, the individual character of their 

 great speculative thinkers or practical organizers may well have been one. 

 Who can tell how profoundly the Avhole subsequent history of China may 

 have been influenced by the individuality of Confucius ? and of Spai'ta (and 

 hence of Greece and the world) by that of Lycurgus ? 



Concerning the nature and extent of what a great man under favorable 



