CH. XVII.] SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL. 169 



But, continues Mr. Froude, "can ycu imagine a science 

 wliich would have foretold sucli movements as " Moham- 

 medanism, or Christianity, or Buddhism ? To the question 

 as thus presented, we must answer, certainly not. Neither 

 can any man foretell any such movement as the typhoiii fever 

 which six months hence is to strike him down. If the latter 

 case does not prove that there are no physiologic laws, 

 neither does the former prove that there avp. no laws of 

 history. In both instances, the antecedents of the pheno- 

 menon are irresistibly working out their results ; though, in 

 both cases, they are so complicated that no human skill can 

 accurately anticipate their course. But to a different present- 

 ment of Mr. Fronde's question, we might return a different 

 answer. Tliere is a sense in which movements like Moham- 

 medanism, or Buddhism, or Christianity, could not have been 

 predicted, and there is a sense in which they could have been. 

 What could not have been predicted was the peculiar character 

 impressed upon these movements by the gigantic personalities 

 of such men as Mohammed and Omar, Sakyamuni, Jesus and 

 Paul. What could have been predicted was the general 

 character and direction of the movements. For example, as 

 I shall show in the following chapter, Christianity as a 

 universal religion was not possible until Eome had united in 

 I single commonwealth the progressive nations of the w'orld. 

 And when Eome had accomplished this task, it might well 

 have been predicted that before long a religion would arise, 

 which should substitute monotheism for polytheism, pro- 

 claiming the universal fatherhood of God, and the universal 

 brotherhood of men. I admit that such a prediction could 

 have been made only by a person familiar with scientific 

 modes of thought not then in existence ; but could such a 

 person have been present to contemplate the phenomena, he 

 might have foreseen such a revolution in its main features, 

 as being an inevitable result of the interaction of Jewish, 

 Hellenic and Eoman ideas. I am inclined to think he might 



