584 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



out"; 1 society, as it were, exacting a certain proportion 

 of crime, as it does of suicide, poverty, physical and 

 mental disease, for the maintenance of its equilibrium 

 and as an " alarming " 2 tribute to its stability. The 

 extreme consequences which seemed to flow from this 

 doctrine were not drawn by Quetelet, who believed in a 

 gradual though slow development of human society, and 

 in moral as well as physical causes and influences. They 

 were drawn, however, by what we may term the mathe- 

 matical school of social philosophers, who relied greatly 

 upon the figures collected by Quetelet and confirmed by 

 others. In this country the statistical labours of Quetelet 

 were made known by Sir John Herschel in a brilliant 

 article 3 in the ' Edinburgh Eeview ' on the " Translation 

 of Quetelet's Letters to Prince Albert on the Theory of 

 Probabilities." They do not seem to have been regarded 

 as detrimental to the moral aspect of human history till 

 23. Henry Thomas Buckle, in his celebrated ' History of 



Buckle. 



Civilisation,' made use of Quetelet's statistics in sup- 



1 ' Sur 1'Homme,' vol. ii. p. 241. 



2 Cf. vol. ii. p. 262 ; also 

 'Systeme Social' (1848), p. 95, 

 and the ' Memoire sur la Statistique 



thinkers to abandon the popular 

 conception of freewill, which sees 

 in it merely the absence of causal 

 determinateness, in favour of the 



Morale' (1848). i causal connection of so-called free 



3 VoL xcii. p. 18. actions with the motives and the 



4 The ' History of Civilisation,' moral character. The subject has 

 vol. i., appeared in 1857, and was | been very fully discussed by F. A. 

 very soon translated in Germany, Lange in his well-known ' History 

 running in a short tune through j of Materialism ' (Eng. trans, by 

 five editions. There the statistical < Thomas, vol. iii. p. 1 96, &c. ) 

 theories of Quetelet had not made i Lange refers to a remark of the 

 that impression which they made : well - known political economist, 



in some other countries. This is 



Prof. Adolph Wagner, who, in his 



explained by the fact that the work ' Die Gesetzmassigkeit in den 



philosophy of Kant, to which | scheinbar willkiihrlichen mensch- 



Buckle himself referred in a long > lichen Handlungen ' (Hamburg, 



passage in his "Introduction," had 1864, p. xiii, &c.)> mentions the 



long before Quetelet accustomed far^t that Quetelet's writings had 



