UISTOUICAL METHOD. 581 



cliiof, or chiefs, whom, with more or h\ss strictness and in cases nioro 

 or less accurately delined, the rest »)1' tin; cumnninity (theyed, or ac- 

 cording to general opinion were bound to obey. Jiy following out this 

 course of inquiry, we should iiyd u nuinlu-r of rei|ui8ites, which have 

 been present in every society that has held together; and on the ces- 

 sation of which it has ceased to be a society, or has reconstructed itself 

 as such upon some new basis, iu which the ronditions were conformed 

 to. Although these results, obtained by comparing diHerent forms and 

 states of society, amount in themselves only to empirical laws; some of 

 them, when once suggesttnl, are found to follow with so mucli proba- 

 bility from general laws of human naturi>, that llu- ccjiisilienct; of tho 

 two processes raises the evidence to comjilete proof, and the generali- 

 zations to the rank of scientific truths. 



This seems to be afiirmable (for instance) of the conclusions arrived 

 at in the following passage; forming part of a criticism on the neijativo 

 philosophy of the eighteenth century, and which 1 quote, although (as 

 in some former instances) from myself, because I have no better way 

 of illustrating the conception 1 have formed of the kind of theorems of 

 which sociological statics W(juld consist. 



"The very first element of the social union, obedience to a govern- 

 ment of some sort, has not been found so easy a thing to estai)lish in 

 the world. Among a timid and spiritless race, like the inhabitants of 

 the vast plains of tropical countries, ])assive obedience may be of 

 natural growth ; though t;ven there we doubt whether it lias ever been 

 found among any people with whom fatalism, or in other words, sub- 

 mission to the pressure of circumstances as the decree of (Jod, did not 

 prevail as a religious doctrine. Jiut the difiiculty of inducing a bravo 

 and warlike race to submit their individual arbitriiaii to any common 

 umpire, has always been felt to be so great, that nothing short of 

 supernatural power has been deemed adequate to overcome it; and 

 such tribes have always assiijned to the first uistitution of civil society 

 a divine origin. So ditt'erently did those judge who knew savage man 

 by actual experience, from those who had no acciuaintanc*' with him 

 except in the civilized state. In nnxh-rn Kuro])e itself, after tin; fall of 

 the Roman empire, to subdue the feudal anarchy and bring the whole 

 people of any European nation into subjection tt» govennnent (although 

 Christianity in its most concentrated form wjis cooperating with all its 

 influences in the work) required thrice as many centuries as have 

 elapsed since that time. 



" Now if these philosophers had kuftwn human nature under any 

 other type than that of their own age, ami of the particular classes of 

 society among whom they moved, it would have occurred to tlu-m, 

 that wherever this habitual submission to law and government has been 

 firmly and durably established, and yet the vigor and manliness of char- 

 acter which resisted its establishment have been in any decrreo iire- 

 served, certain requisites have existed, certain conditions have been 

 fulfilled, of which the following may be regarde<l as the nrincipal. 



"First: there has existed, for all who were accounted citizens — for 

 all who were not slaves, kv\^X down by brute force — a system of vdu- 

 cation, bomnning with infancy and contimu'd through life, of which, 

 whatever else it might include, one main and incessant ingredient wa« 

 restraining discipline. To train the Iniman being in the habit, and 

 thence the power, of subordinating his personal impulses and aims to 



