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



vicTually oi socially embodied. He wlio asserts the contrary, 

 maintains " a form of the INfanichsean doctrine of two prin- 

 ciples .... in which one principle, that of order, presides 

 over the physical phenomena of the universe, and the other, 

 that of disorder, over its moral phenomena." ^ As I have 

 already said, no middle ground can be taken. The denial of 

 causation is the affirmation of chance, and "between the 

 theory of Chance and the theory of Law, there can be no 

 compromise, no reciprocity, no borrowing and lending." To 

 write history on any method furnished by the free-will 

 doctrine, w^ould be utterly impossible. Mr. Smith tells us 

 that " finding at Eome a law to encourage tyrannicide, we 

 are certain that there had been tyrants at Eome, though 

 there is nothing approaching to historical evidence of the 

 tyranny of Tarquin." By drawing this inference he abandons 

 his own principles, according to which the law in question 

 might have originated without any cause except the self- 

 determining will of some Eoman legislator. And he is 

 equally inconsistent in saying that " a nation may have to go 

 through one stage of knowledge or civilization before it can 

 reach another, but its going through either is still free'* If 

 by this it is meant that a nation's progress need not be due 

 to constraint exercised over it by other nations, the state- 

 ment is true, but it is one which no one has thought of dis- 

 puting. But if it is meant that the latter of two successive 

 stages of civilization is not caused by the former, the state- 

 ment destroys itself. By admitting that " a nation may have 

 to go through one stage of civilization before it can reach 

 another," Mr. Smith gives up his case and concedes all which 

 has ever been claimed by those who would construct a 

 science of history. If there is a definite order of sequence 

 among the stages of civilization, that order may sooner or 

 later be formulated, and to formulate that order is to found 

 sociology as a science. But if causation in history is denied, 

 * "W. Adam, Tuories of History, p. 66. 



