;h. XIX.] ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS. 237 



turn it liitlier and tliitlier by shrewdly-concocted acts of par- 

 liament. Nor, in maintaining this last position, did he ever 

 fall into the opposite error — characteristic of superficial 

 writers like Macaulay and Buckle — that individual genius 

 and exertion is of little or no account in modifying the course 

 of history. He did not forget that history is made by indi- 

 vidual men, as much as a coral reef is made by individual 

 polyps. Each contributes his infinitesimal shave of effort : 

 nor is the share of effort always so trifling. Considering the 

 course of history merely as the resultant of the play of moral 

 forces, is there not in a Julius Caesar or a Themistokles as 

 large a manifestation of the forces which go to make history 

 as in thousands of common men ? Nevertheless the fact 

 remains that civilization runs in a definite path, that the 

 sum-total of ideas and feelings dominant in the next genera- 

 tion will be the offspring of the sum-total of ideas and feel- 

 ings dominant, in this, and that only by understanding the 

 general course of the m.ovcmenf of humanity can we hope to 

 make our volitions count for much as an item in the resulting 

 aggregate of effects. 



Holding such views as these, Comte saw that the first aim 

 of the sociological inquirer must be to ascertain the law of 

 progress. And accordingly he set himself to work to perform 

 this task, with the only instrument then at his command, — 

 that of historical induction. I have already remarked upon 

 his wonderful skill in the use of that instrument of research. 

 I doubt if anyone has ever lived who had a keener sense of 

 the significance of historic events, so far as such significance 

 could be perceived without the aid of conceptions furnished 

 by the sciences of organic development. The fifth volume of 

 the " Pliilosophie Positive " is certainly a marvellous tableau 

 of the progress of society. I know of no concrete presenta- 

 tion of universal history which can be compared with it. 

 The general excellence of the conception is matched by the 

 excellence of the execution even to the smallest details. And 



