Moral Consequences of Heredity. 339 



and Littre, 1 have observed, all acts commonly regarded as result- 

 ing from free-will such as murders, thefts, crimes and offences of 

 all kinds, marriages, divorces, suicides reach about the same 

 figure year after year in a given country. Thus, in Belgium, in the 

 five years 1841 5 the average number of marriages in cities was 

 2,642 per annum, the utmost deviations being + 46 and 136. 

 In France, during the long period between 1826 and 1844, the 

 number of criminals per annum varied from 8,237 to 6,299, and 

 so on. * 



It is certain that we cannot glance at the statistics of the various 

 human acts without being struck with the regularity of their occur- 

 rence. This proves that man's causality is governed by laws 

 which admit very little variation, but it in no wise proves that such 

 causality does not exist. We entirely believe in the existence of 

 social and historical laws, but statistics cannot teach us whether 

 these laws stand alone, or whether there is not besides an indeter- 

 minate number of causes. As Wundt very well remarks, when we 

 extend our observations from one man over a whole population, 

 we eliminate all those causes which appertain only to the individual, 

 or to a small portion of the population. We adopt the same pro- 

 cedure as the physicist, who, in order to eliminate all accidental 

 influences, always brings together a great number of observations 

 and thence deduces a law. But when the statistician, having thus 

 put aside the individual influences, concludes that they have no 

 existence, it is as though the physicist were to conclude that the 

 accidental influences he eliminated in the general did not exist in 

 the individual. The physicist may disregard these, since for him 

 they have no significance ; but as for the psychologist who raises 

 the question whether besides the social influences there exist 

 causes of volition of an individual nature he, of course, may not 

 overlook those deviations proper to each particular case, for they 

 indicate the existence of individual causes. 2 



From what has been said we get little more than negative 

 notions about free-will, and, indeed, it is perhaps impossible to go 



1 The reader will find some curious statistics in the R&vue de Philosophic 

 Positive, for Sept. 1 868. 



2 Wundt, vol. ii. ch. 56. 



