6a 2 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



liavc called forth, historical science authorizes not absolute, but only con- 

 ditional predictions. General causes count for much, but individuals also 

 " produce great changes in history, and color its whole complexion long 



after their death No one can doubt that the Roman republic would 



have subsided into a military despotism if Julius Caesar had never lived " 

 (thus much was rendered practically certain by general causes) ; " but is 

 it at all clear that in that case Gaul would ever have formed a province of 

 the empire? Might not Varus have lost his three legions on the banks of 

 the Rhone? and might not that river have become the frontier instead of 

 the Rhine? This might well have happened if Cassar and Crassus had 

 changed provinces; and it is surely impossible to say that in such an 

 event the venue (as lawyers say) of European civilization might not have 

 been changed. The Norman Conquest in the same way was as much the 

 act of a single man, as the writing of a newspaper article; and knowing 

 as we do the history of that man and his family, we can retrospectively 

 predict with all but infallible certainty, that no other person " (no other in 

 that age, I presume, is meant) " could have accomplished the enterprise. 

 If it had not been accomplished, is there any ground to suppose that either 

 our history or our national character would have been what they are ?" 



As is most truly remarked by the same writer, the whole stream of Gre- 

 cian history, as cleared up by Mr. Grote, is one series of examples how oft- 

 en events on which the whole destiny of subsequent civilization turned, 

 were dependent on the personal character for good or evil of some one in- 

 dividual. It must be said, however, that Greece furnishes the most extreme 

 example of this nature to be found in history, and is a very exaggerated 

 specimen of the general tendency. It has happened only that once, and 

 will probably never happen again, that the fortunes of mankind depended 

 upon keeping a certain order of things in existence in a single town, or a 

 country scarcely larger than Yorkshire; capable of being ruined or saved 

 by a hundred causes, of very slight magnitude in comparison with the gen- 

 eral tendencies of human affairs. Neither ordinary accidents, nor the char- 

 acters of individuals, can ever again be so vitally important as they then 

 were. The longer our species lasts, and the more civilized it becomes, the 

 more, as Conite remarks, does the influence of past generations over the 

 present, and of mankind en masse over every individual in it, predominate 

 over other forces ; and though the course of affairs never ceases to be sus- 

 ceptible of alteration both by accidents and by personal qualities, the in- 

 creasing prej)onderance of the collective agency of the species over all 

 minor causes, is constantly bringing the general evolution of the race into 

 something which deviates less from a certain and preappointed track. His- 

 torical science, therefore, is always becoming more possible ; not solely be- 

 cause it is better studied, but because, in every generation, it becomes bet- 

 ter adapted for study. 



CHAPTER XII. 



OF THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE, OR ART ; INCLUDING MORALITY AND POLICY. 



§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to characterize the 

 present state of those among the branches of knowledge called Moral, which 

 are sciences in the only proper sense of the term, that is, inquiries into the 

 course of nature. It is customary, however, to include under the term 



