Conclusion. 391 



It would still remain for us to show that social and historical 

 phenomena are not exempt from determinism; but it is impossible 

 to do this here in a satisfactory manner. We may simply observe 

 that it is the necessary consequence of all that has been said. 

 History results from the action of nature on man, and of man on 

 nature ; but if nature is subject to determinism, and man no less so, 

 the resultant historical and social development cannot escape. 



Thus we find necessity everywhere at the beginning, in the 

 middle, and at the end of all things. It is almost superfluous to 

 show that heredity is only a form of it. If vital actions, in their 

 production and in their evolution are subject to determinism, and 

 if physiological heredity is bound up with organic heredity, is it 

 not plain that hereditary transmission is one of the causes that 

 introduce mechanism into mental activity, and which introduce 

 nature into the domain of free-will ? We have seen that in practice 

 that is, in the moral, the social, and the political order, free-will 

 loses what heredity gains. The totality of the motions which, 

 according to mechanical laws, determine an organism to be, and to 

 be in such a manner rather than in another, determine indirectly 

 the mental constitution, which, as regards its empiric conditions, is 

 bound up with that organism. 



Heredity, therefore, is a form of determinism ; but what distin- 

 guishes this from all other forms is, that it is a specific deter- 

 minism the habit of a family, a race, or a species. 'The disposition 

 possessed by the living economy to follow the directions previously 

 impressed upon it that tendency to repetition whence often results 

 the apparently spontaneous reproduction of certain phenomena 

 is inherent in the organization; it is by it that animals are led to 

 imitate themselves, that is, to repeat what they have previously 

 done ; and this, too, leads them to imitate their ancestors.' (Du- 

 trochet.) In other words, nothing that ever has been can cease to 

 be; hence, in the individual, habit; in the species, heredity. This 

 it is which fixes us in the indestructible series of causes and effects, 

 and by this our poor personality is connected with the ultimate 

 origin of things, through an infinite concatenation of necessities. 

 Heredity is but one form of that ultimate law which by physicists 

 is called the conservation of energy, and by metaphysicians uni- 

 versal casuality. 



