588 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



the laws of human nature, form the characters of the 

 men; but the men, 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 various heavenly bodies 

 produce changes both in the direction and in the 

 intensity of the forces by which those positions are 

 determined. But, in the case of the solar system, 

 these mutual actions bring round again, after a certain 

 number 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, conform- 

 ably to the laws of astronomy, there might be) others 

 which, instead of an orbit, describe a trajectory, or a 

 course not returning into itself. One or other of these 

 must be the type to which human affairs must also 

 conform. 



One of the thinkers who earliest conceived the 

 succession of historical events as subject to fixed 

 laws, and endeavoured to discover these laws by an 

 analytical survey of history, Vico, the celebrated 

 author of the Scienza Nuova, adopted the former 

 of these opinions. He conceived the phenomena 

 of human society as revolving in an orbit; as going 

 through periodically the same series of changes. 

 Though there were not wanting circumstances 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 speculations have universally adopted 

 the idea of a trajectory or progress, in lieu of an orbit 

 or cycle. 



The words Progress and Progressiveness, are not 



